Brooke Summer 0:00 Hello there, amazing entrepreneurs, business owners. I am so excited. I really wanted to do video today, but I just wasn't feeling like putting my makeup on. And truth be told, I may or may not be fully dressed. That's the beauty of podcasting, though, right, that I can show up for you and give you amazing information without being fully dressed, because yay for audio only. Thank you so much for being here today. I am super, super, super excited, because this is part one of SEO summer. I am claiming it. We are doing SEO summer. I don't know if we're gonna do it every year. It's kind of like small stuff you can do in the summer. Maybe the kids are out of school and your patience is worn thin. That's okay, because SEO can be done in very, very small steps. And we are going to talk all about SEO summer. Today's episode is part one, which is SEO 101. What the heck is it? Why do I need it? Why do I care? And the terms that you need to know so that when I start to say things and you're like, Wait, what did you mean? I don't know what that meant. You will know exactly what I'm talking about. We are also going to talk about five things that you need to have on every web page in your website. I'm so excited to start this. Let's listen in.

Hello there, gorgeous business owners. Welcome to bold with Brooke, the podcast for creative business owners to learn the marketing and business skills they need to get more clients and design their lives on their terms so we can actually make a living doing what we love. Am I right? I am your host, Brooke summer, and I'm an entrepreneur, educator and champion of women, reminding them to embrace and step into their power. I'm bringing almost 20 years of business and marketing experience straight to you to help you get more clients and run a sustainable and successful business without burnout or overwhelm. Let's jump in to today's topic.

Hello, my amazing business owner friends entrepreneurs, welcome back to another episode of Bold with Brooke, the podcast and place to be if you want to actually make a living doing what you love. I am so excited. Today is the day we are starting my new series called SEO Summer. So we are going to talk all about SEO for the next six weeks ish, because I know that it can be really, really overwhelming, and I want to break all of this down for you step by step. So I have compiled a ton of questions that I've received over the years and questions that are asked in my Bold with Brooke community. If you are not in the community, why the heck not join us over at boldwithbrooke.com/community so that you can ask your own questions and learn a little bit more about SEO. I have also created a whole group of templates and checklists and all the things and these podcast episodes are going to go into that as well, but these are still in progress, so they're not there quite yet, but you can get Brooke's SEO starter pack at boldwithbrooke.com/seo

Let's start from the very, very, very beginning. You may have been in business groups, and you ask people, How are you growing your business? How are you marketing your business? And someone may have responded with the word SEO. The letter is the acronym S, like Sam, E, like Edward, O, like Oscar. And you may know what that is. You may have even Googled it. You may have said, What the heck is that? I need to know what that is. Let me get more information. And so you go on over to the Google and you ask, what is SEO? I am going to give you the definition, but I'm also going to break it down for you. So what is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization, and this is the process of optimizing your website and all of the content that's on your website, typically a blog or videos, anything of that nature. You're optimizing these things to improve their visibility and ranking on search engine result pages. The acronym for that, the shortened, shortened, abbreviated version of search engine result pages is S, E, R, P, S, SERPs. The goal of SEO is to attract organic, meaning non paid. You're not paying for ads. This is just traffic from search engines like Google and Bing and Yahoo. SEO involves various techniques and strategies, and there's a lot that goes into it. It's really kind of a puzzle, a little bit of a Rubik's Cube, but some of those things include keyword research, on page optimization, technical SEO, content creation and link building. So why the heck do you need SEO? Well, first, I'm going to give you a few different reasons.

Number one is that SEO increases visibility of your website and your brand, and traffic to your website you get higher rankings. So SEO helps your website rank higher in the search results, which makes it more likely that users are going to click on your site. If someone goes to Google and searches for whatever it is that you do, and you have been strategizing and optimizing your pages to come up for that, then they will see you higher in the search results, and typically, the businesses that show up higher in the results get more clicks. This also brings you more targeted traffic. So when you optimize for specific keywords and long tail, short tail, all the in between, you're going to start attracting users who are actively searching for the information that relates directly to your products or services from your business. What does this mean? In like normal everyday speak. This means that when you have optimized this correctly, people are going to go to Google or even now it's commonly things like voice activated assistance, such as Alexa or Siri. There's lots of different options and lots of things that are now using search engines to search for you, and when you use these specific keywords and or phrases and you're optimizing your content, you can now start to capture the attention of some of these users that are searching for that.

Number two, cost effective marketing. Y'all this is super, super cost effective, because when you are doing it yourself, it is free. It takes some time, but it is free. This is organic traffic. When we say organic, that means that you're not paying to get that traffic. Now, can you pay for an ad to show up in the Google search results? Yes, you absolutely can. Google has very effective ads, but you can also take advantage of organic traffic, meaning people are not clicking on those ads, you are not paying for that traffic, and unlike paid advertising that costs you nothing. So once you start to achieve these good rankings, and you start to move up in the various searches that you have entered, you can maintain it by keeping your SEO efforts ongoing, which will reduce the need for running ads. I have actually never, ever, ever run ads for the photography side of my business. I tried and it didn't work, and I just kind of gave up right away. It's not something I'm proud of. One day, I'm sure that I will work on it more. I have several friends that do it very effectively, but SEO is not paid advertising. This is organic traffic that you are able to take advantage of simply by including certain things in your website so that it shows up in those search results pages.

Number three, you have an improved user experience when you are optimizing for SEO, your website structure will show it when someone goes to your website, it should be very, very, very easy to use. And SEO also means optimizing the website's design, the navigation and the architecture, so it makes it easier for users to find what they're looking for without having to go for clicks into a certain article. This can also improve load times technical SEO, which means making sure that the back end of your website is optimized, ensures that your website loads quickly, which improves user satisfaction and reduces bounce rates. In again, super simple layman's terms, this means that when someone comes to your website, it loads quickly, and they don't have to wait for everything to load properly.

Number four, good SEO and working on SEO can build credibility and trust. This is also going to improve your authority, your brand authority, your business authority. These high ranking websites are often perceived as more credible and trustworthy by users when someone searches for a specific product or a specific service in a search engine, the first results that come up are often perceived as more credible, more trustworthy, and overall better options when it comes to doing business with them. SEO also encourages the creation of high quality and relevant content, which can establish your site as an authority for your industry, and we're going to talk about this a little more in just a moment.

Number five, adaptability to market changes, the algorithm changes. We all know this. This comes to social media. It comes down to pretty much everything that we're working with is constantly changing an SEO means staying updated with search engine algorithm changes and adjusting your strategies accordingly to maintain or improve the rankings that you have. The trends can also be something that you want to look at. These SEO practices include keeping up with search trends and user demand, and that makes sure that your content remains relevant and timely and up to date. And this does not mean that you're going to get rid of all your previous content. It just means that we're updating. We're changing. Things are looking different, and that's okay, as things start to change with the changing times.

Number six. Local search is enhanced when you work on SEO as well. So for businesses that operate locally, such as my photography studio, which is primarily local, I've had a lot of people fly in from out of state, but when we are looking at attracting people locally, SEO can help in optimizing your site to attract local customers, which also includes enhancing your visibility in local search results and Google Maps. If you guys have ever been in a new neighborhood and you're like, I really feel like some tacos today, you can literally go into Google and type tacos near me, and it will search based on your current location. Local search can be very, very powerful if you run a business that is locally based. SEO is essential for any business or website that wants to increase online visibility and attract targeted traffic, meaning the people that want to work with you and the people that you want to work with most. And it will help you grow long term. When you start to work on SEO, you can improve your website's performance, enhance your user experience, build credibility and position yourself as an authority while staying competitive in your industry. And this is huge.

Let's talk about Google, Yahoo, Bing, all of these things. Okay, these are search engines. I'm sure we've all used them, and now we even ask, I know in our family, we ask Alexa things all the time. We are constantly asking Alexa if our dogs can have mangoes or whatever we are chopping up in the kitchen. We are consistently asking Alexa these types of questions. I know for some people, it's Siri, for some people, it's Google, but all of these voice activated assistants are using a search engine to find that information. This is kind of a whole other level of SEO that people don't necessarily consider when someone is looking for something specific. I know my mother in law in particular, she has vision issues, and so she uses Siri quite a bit if she is looking for something locally, she is going to ask Siri, Siri, where is this restaurant near me? Where can I find a plumber near me? Where can I find and she is going to ask Siri. And then Siri goes to the search engines to find the answer that she's looking for. Why do you need to know all of this? Well? Because these search engines number one job. If you've ever seen like the memes and stuff. You had one job these search engines. Number one job is to give relevant results. If you were to search for, let's just say, a restaurant near Denver, Colorado, and all of a sudden Google is showing you restaurants in South Dakota, you would be like, this is useless. Why am I coming back to Google? They want your eyeballs on their site, therefore they are going to give the most relevant results possible so that they can consistently get you back to their site. That is how Google rose so quickly above the others, is because they had a focus on super relevant information while the others were still lagging behind. I said before that I have never run paid ads for my photography business, and that is true. One thing I did do, though, is I started using SEO very, very early. My first SEO class that I taught was in person to my wedding group because, yes, I used to do weddings in 2010 so I have been teaching SEO for a very, very long time, and I can promise you, it is one of the long term benefits that can bring consistent traffic to you and clients to you that want to work with you. Most SEO will benefit you for years, unlike the life of other marketing efforts. This is good and bad, though, because SEO is not an overnight thing. It takes consistency and patience, which a lot of us don't want to do. Our culture is built on. I want it now. I will have it now. I will have my Amazon package delivered to me in two hours. And believe me, I get it okay. When I am on Amazon and I'm like, Oh, I can get that today, but I have to have $25 to get it today. You better believe I'm gonna bring that up to $25 even if it's a $10 thing, because I want it today. I am very impatient. I get it. SEO can be really, really frustrating. When you are updating, you're doing all the things, but you don't see the benefit for a while. This is not something that's overnight, but it is also not something that will go away overnight. Your SEO takes a while to see the benefit, but it also outlasts the other benefits that you can see more immediately. You can't see this movement immediately. It's not like the various feedback loops that we have on social media. You can post something on Instagram and see likes immediately. Within 24 hours, you're probably going to see the majority of the activity on that post very, very quickly. You can see the comments. You can see the conversations, the likes, the shares, all of the. Things. SEO doesn't work that way. It takes time, and so many people don't use it because they don't want to wait. And I promise you, if you are not using SEO in your business, you are missing out.

With that being said, I'm going to go over some terms that you need to know, because we are going to be using this for the next few weeks. All right, so this is going to be kind of your glossary, and this is also included in Brooke's SEO starter pack. Go to boldwithbrooke.com/seo if you want to have this written out in front of you so that you can see all of the details. First up keywords. I've already said this a few times, and the whole reason that the last episode was done with the five content pillars is because your keywords will likely relate to those content pillars. These are also known as key phrases, words, phrases. They're added to your online content to improve search engine rankings for those terms. And there are different types of keywords, and we'll go into that more a little bit later, but there are long keywords and short keywords, and I want to encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to keywords, because it's not just the ones that immediately come to mind. And again, actually, I have to stop myself there, because I'll go into a tangent on keywords. And we have a whole episode coming up about keywords, all right, so we're just going to keep going with the terms. I promise you, we're going to talk about keywords, though.

Next up is backlinks. SEO backlinks, which are also known as inbound links, are links from other websites to a page on your own website. These can be blog posts, pages, etc. These are a really important part of off page search engine optimization. This is a strategy that you can start to use, because what these links do is they start to signal to search engines that your content is valuable enough to link to, that your content is good, that you're not just a spammer or a scammer trying to get people's money, that you're actually providing a service that is relevant to the keywords that People are searching for. Next up is SEO title. This is the text that appears in a page's header or as a headline, which is an h2, tag, h1, tag, all of those different tags. Again, we're gonna talk about that. Next up is slug, and this is not the little weird thing that like crawls on the sidewalk without the shell. Why don't they have a shell? By the way? Is anyone else weirded out by that? I don't know, but the slug, when it comes to SEO, is a descriptive text that identifies a page, post or category within a website. So this is not quite like other metadata, which is the data behind the scenes on your website. The Slug is actually part of the URL. So every time I've told you in this episode, go to boldwithbrooke.com/seo that slash SEO, that is the slug. So this is the end of that URL, after your website domain, typically after the top level domain. There's a lot of other things. For instance, I have boldwithbrooke.com/email 101, which is my email marketing beginner free course, these are all slugs, and that also assists with SEO, that also helps Google and other search engines to know exactly what that page or post is about.

Next up is meta description. An SEO meta description is also known as a description tag in the HTML. The HTML is the code that actually builds your website that shows when you open your website in a browser, and this meta description is a short summary of the web page's content that appears in search engine results. It's also a really important part of on page SEO, and can help increase organic traffic to a specific website or web page. Next up is alt text. This is alternative text. This is a short, written description of an image that appears on a web page or a post when the image can't be viewed. Think of people with vision issues or impairments, or maybe someone is loading a site in a place where they don't have a lot of cell phone service and so they're not loading the images properly for whatever reason that browser is not pulling it up. This will give them a short description of what that image is for long form content. This is any piece of content that is longer and more detailed than typical short form content, and this takes more time to consume. These can be blog posts, longer videos, podcast episodes, articles and more. This episode itself, even though it's not going to be as long as some of mine, is a form of long form content, if we are thinking in terms of food, okay? Because you know, your girl likes food, these are the meals, okay? These are the meaty parts of information that someone might want to consume, whereas short form content, our next term is content that can be consumed quickly and easily by an audience, whether it's written, visual or audio. The goal with short form content is to convey a message in a concise and engaging way without overwhelming the user. Short form content is usually designed to be snackable, meaning it. Be absorbed in a few minutes or even seconds. These are the things that you're going to pull up when you're in a waiting room at the doctor's office. You don't know when you're going to be called. You don't want to start a big, long article about something, so you pull up Tiktok or Instagram that is short form content for the most part. They're starting to add in longer options as well, but often, social media is going to be most often short form content.

Next term is analytics, and we are going to go into this in detail in the next few weeks. But what you need to know right now is that SEO analytics, or search engine optimization, analytics, is the process of collecting and analyzing data from search engines to improve a website's performance and visibility. The goal is to gain insights from the data that can help improve SEO efforts, things like ranking in search engines, organic traffic, all the things we've talked about right user data, such as geography, devices and other details, are people pulling up your website on a cell phone or on a computer. It may not seem like a big deal, but you can optimize your content based on how people are receiving it. Keywords within SEO Analytics, you can identify the traffic keywords that people are using most in the related terms, what might work better for you? You can also look at conversions. When someone comes to your website, are they clicking to book you. Are they clicking to sign up? Are they clicking through to your contact page? You can see exactly where they go, and you can also see their entry and exit pages. Is there a page that is really turning people off on your website? And once they get to that page, they like, No, I'm out. You can see all of the visitor paths within SEO analytics, it is very, very, very powerful. I want to give you a really quick, little, meaty shortcut here, and we're going to talk about five things that you need to have on every web page.

I know that that is a ton of information, and I'm trying really hard not to overwhelm you in this I teach SEO y'all. I have been teaching it since 2010 I've been teaching it online since 2020 and there is so much information. If you are like, holy moly, Brooke, I feel like I'm drowning. I promise you, we're gonna break it all down for the next six weeks or so. I think I'm up to seven episodes. So might be seven weeks, but right now it's six weeks for sure.

If you want to go further in depth into all of this, you can go to boldwithbrooke.com/seo to get Brooke's SEO starter pack. If you want the course, there are two ways to access that course. First, you can get into bold Marketing Academy, which is my preference, my recommendation. The SEO course is in bold, Marketing Academy. It is a monthly cost for SEO summer. It is at the low price, instead of a one time investment. If you want just the course, you're like, Brooke, I don't want a monthly thing. I just want the course. You can go to SEO4photographers.com and that is a number four. So SEO number four photographers.com Yes, the SEO information, all of the details do apply to other businesses as well. So if you're listening to this and you're a life coach or you're a makeup artist, or any number of different businesses, all of this still applies. Even though it says SEO for photographers, I promise you, it still applies. Those are the details on how to get further into SEO. If you're like, oh my gosh, Brooke, I'm sold. I want to do more. That's how you can get that. Course, I am going to continue breaking this down, and I do want to give you a little bit of something to chew on before we come into our next episode.

I want you to consider there are five things that you should have on every single web page, not a website. What's the difference? You may be asking, well, the website is a collection of all the pages, the blog posts, the categories, all of it. The web page is one specific page. So this is one blog post. This is one page, one contact page, one gallery page, one about us. Page doesn't matter what page it is, but that is one part of the bigger site. And these are five things that you should have on every single page.

First, you need to have links. These are both internal and external. So you need to link to your own content. If you are writing a blog post about what to wear or what you should be looking for. You need to link to some of your own content on your own website, in that post or in that page. You also need to link externally as well. We're going to talk more about backlinks, I promise we're going to go into more of that.

Two you need to have backlinks from other websites. Have people link to you ask them to share it. I promise you, if they're not going to share they'll just say no, and that's okay. The worst thing that could happen is you're like, oh, that kind of sucks. You feel an emotion. You move on. The best thing that could happen is you get an awesome backlink to your website, which improves your SEO.

Number three, image optimization. This includes. Sizing, titles, alt text and appropriate formatting. You do not want to put giant, huge images on a website, because while your website may automatically resize them for you when someone pulls it up, chances are those images are way too big for your website, and if someone has limited service, they're not going to load properly. Make sure that your images are optimized.

The fourth thing you need to have on every web page are keywords written for a human, not a robot. You want to write your content in a way that is relevant, in the way that you speak, so that humans can understand it. First and foremost, those robots that met it crawl your site for SEO are getting really, really, really, really smart, and we don't want to try and write silly things that make us just sound weird, right? Like this is Brooke. She does this, and she does this. If you are looking for this, you should really talk to Brooke, because she does this and they're just repeating themselves over and over again. I cannot tell you how many websites I look at that are written that way, thinking that it's going to improve their SEO. Y'all you need to write in a way that's for a human that has a good readability score. And we're going to talk more about that as well.

And the fifth thing that you need to have on every web page, not just website, to see that growth, is content that is relevant to what you do. Relevance matters so much. I, as a boudoir photographer, am not going to try and keyword the heck out of my website for family photos. I'm just not, because as soon as Google sees that I don't have anything about family photos on my website, it could be a ding against my SEO ranking, and I don't want that. So I'm going to make sure that all of my content is completely relevant to what it is that I do, the keywords that I'm using and the things that I'm using, to try to help Google see that I can help the people that are searching for that man, isn't it so funny when you start talking about something that you know and love, that you like really are on top of Time flies, and then you're like, I could just keep talking about this. Really, my SEO course is so in depth, and I'm trying really, really hard to scale it back for these podcast episodes, because I could teach you guys about this all day long. So I'm gonna stop there, because our next SEO episode in part two, we're gonna go all into keywords like we are going to talk all about the different types of keywords, why you need them, where you put them, all the things.

So we're gonna stop here with the kind of intro to SEO, as well as the terms that you need to know, five things you need to have on every web page. So that we can break this down and start fresh in the next episode. This is Seo summer part one. SEO 101, terms to know and what you need to have on every single page on your website. Next up is going to be SEO summer part two. And I'm so happy to have you here. You guys, I'm really, really excited to teach this. I haven't put a lot of SEO stuff on the podcast before.

If you loved this content, and you're excited for this series too, and you're like, Brooke, this was amazing. I'm gonna keep going. How can I thank you? I would be so honored if you would head over to iTunes leave me a review for a quick and easy way to find it. You can go to boldwithbrooke.com/itunes you can pause if you need I'll wait, because those reviews are what help us to bring in amazing guests and keep producing the content to help more people. So if you are someone that wants to help people and wants to get this content into more people's hands, homes, brains, all the things, a review is the easiest way to do that. I am so happy to have been featured on Amazon as their featured podcast, along with being one of the top 3% of podcasts on marketing in the world. And I am so passionate about helping you move your own business forward. This podcast is free. It's free education, and those reviews are like a little thank you, a little nudge, and we appreciate them so much. I would love to know from this first episode, SEO summer part one, what are some of your biggest aha moments or takeaways? If you have questions as well, again, we are doing six weeks of this. Your questions are going to help shape the next five to six episodes. Please share them in the community at boldwithbrooke.com/community, it's my little cozy corner Facebook, or you can take a screenshot and tag me on social media @boldwithbrooke. All one word. Your business is just one way that you move through the world, impact people around you, your clients, your family, community in the way that you choose. And it's time to step into that power and own it fully, including marketing your business, talking about what you do to get the clients you want and need to reach your biggest goals. I can't wait to see what you do with your business and how you change the world, because what you do truly matters, and we are going to dive into SEO to get you in front of the people who. To work with you most have an amazing rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining me today and listening in. You can find all of the show notes for this and every episode over at boldwithbrooke.com/podcast where you can also find all of the links or resources mentioned. I can't wait to work with you. Have an amazing rest of your day.