Marketing Happy Hour Podcast
Join The Marketing Broker, Shelby McFarland, for the Marketing Happy Hour Podcast. With over 12 years of entrepreneurial experience and as the owner of a successful sign shop, Shelby brings a unique perspective to the world of marketing. Each episode, Shelby dives into insightful discussions, practical tips, and expert interviews designed to help entrepreneurs and marketers alike navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, branding, and business growth. Grab your favorite beverage and join us for a lively conversation at the intersection of creativity and strategy. Welcome to the Marketing Happy Hour Podcast with your host, Shelby McFarland. Cheers! 🥂
Marketing Happy Hour Podcast
Maximizing SEO Success on a Small Business Budget
Unlock the secrets of SEO success for small businesses without breaking the bank. Join me, Shelby, as I guide you through the essentials of enhancing your website's Google ranking in an affordable and effective way. Discover why patience is key, with results blossoming over 90 to 120 days of consistent effort. By focusing on optimizing your Google Business profile, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly and secure, and strategically using keywords and backlinks, you'll learn transformative techniques to elevate your online presence. Plus, tap into Google's free keyword planner and understand how customer reviews can significantly boost your credibility and ranking.
Learn the strategies that make your website more Google-friendly and attract more traffic. We'll explore the significance of internal linking, the simplicity of crafting SEO-friendly content using AI tools like ChatGPT, and the advantages of local landing pages for superior local search visibility. Uncover the value of local directories, guest blogging, and social media in creating valuable backlinks. I'll emphasize the importance of monitoring your progress with Google Analytics to refine your strategies and achieve maximum ROI. By dedicating time regularly to these practices, you can enhance your online presence, attract more customers, and drive substantial business growth. Let this episode inspire you to take actionable steps towards SEO success and business expansion.
Hey guys, what's up? It's Shelby here, the marketing broker. Today we're talking all about SEO. Seo stands for search engine optimization. There are some really cool tools that are free, as well as some tricks you can do without having to pay thousands of dollars to an SEO expert to help your small business thrive on the internet. So exactly is SEO again, I just said it's search engine optimization but how do we actually use it to our benefit for our business on the internet? It's important because, with our SEO efforts, we're gonna be ranking higher on Google. So something that you should know is that it's gonna take time to actually rank high on Google.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of clients that are like okay, I want this done tomorrow. What can you do to make me higher on Google? The more and more businesses that are getting on Google, the harder it is to actually become on the like. Get on the first page of Google. Sometimes you'll have SEO agencies call you that only do this for you and they will charge you thousands of dollars a month. They'll never tell you how to do it on your own and they'll also offer you or try to tell you that this is gonna be a fast process. I like to tell people. Give it 90 to 120 days and you can do these small steps on your own if you are capable of doing it. If not, then you can hire someone to help you, but it shouldn't cost you thousands of dollars a month for SEO efforts on your business.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about how Google ranks our website, because, ultimately, our website is what we're going to use these SEO skills and stuff for to make it rank higher on Google. We want to. A good Google ranks it on keywords, your content, the backlinks, as well as the technical aspects of your website. So let's talk about that your technical aspects are going to be is it mobile friendly? Is it on a secure site? Is it easy to navigate? Like you'll have Google bots that will go onto your website and they will actually see if all this stuff works. What are people clicking on? Do you have the backlinks, which is going to be linking other websites to you, which means that that gives you more credibility. So, to get backlinks, we're going to talk about that soon, but we're going to be posted on other things like Chamber of Commerce websites, blogging for other people, getting any kind of podcast interview, something that people are actually posting about you with the link, and another thing is the content. So are we going to answer the questions that people are searching for.
Speaker 1:So, for marketing broker, if people are looking for social media management, if they go to my website, will it actually come up with an answer for what is social media management or what do I offer for social media management? And then the last thing is going to be your keywords, and with keywords we can look up things on a google keyword search. That's completely free to you. We'll talk about it soon, but you can look at keywords that are like just about your business. What are people searching for in your area? Are they doing doing social media management? Are they doing websites? Are they looking up hello, seo stuff? Obviously you're here listening to this because you're wondering about SEO, and so that's something that the Marketing Broker website answers for you, or that this podcast answers for you.
Speaker 1:So the first thing I want you to do is optimize your Google Business profile, so your Google Business profile is 100% free. Everything I'm going to tell you on this podcast is 100% free Things that you can do to help optimize your own search engine for your business. So go to Google Business profile. You can even Google Google Business profile. See, if you have one. Sometimes if you've been in business for a hot minute, it will automatically set one up and then you can take ownership of it.
Speaker 1:If you are new to business, say I would say in the last five to seven years, you would need to set up your own Google Business profile. You wanna get on there, you wanna verify it, make sure all your information is on there your website, your phone number, the services you offer. It also really likes to have a location and so with that location, if you were like, hey, I work out of my house, okay, well, you can put a location of just a state or just an area and you don't have to worry about your home location actually showing up. Now, if you are a store, if you have a storefront, if you sell products or something like that, then you definitely want to make sure that you have that location on there. So we want to claim our Google business profile and then you want to update it once a month. You can add photos on there, you can add more services, you can put a post. Technically, you can have a post on there and that really feeds into the search engine.
Speaker 1:You want people to leave you reviews. So, as much as you do work for people, I want you asking people for reviews, especially if you are a product-based business, so that way, people can see okay, well, this product works for this person. If you're a service-based business, just like I am, I want people to see oh, she's actually helped these people with their SEO or she's helped these people with their social media stuff, and they can see the good reviews that people have left behind. Of course, you may have the option or people can still have the option of leaving a bad review, so we want to make sure that we can maintain that and that we're actually doing good business for people to leave good reviews, because Google does use that in your ranking for search engines.
Speaker 1:The next one is something that a lot of people overcomplicate and we want to just kind of dumb it down a little bit. It's using keywords. As I mentioned earlier, google has a free keyword planner. So Google Google keyword planner and whenever you look at that, you can put in your industry, put in your area and see what people are actually using as keywords and then incorporate that. We want to incorporate that on our website content. We want to incorporate that on our social media content. You can do that through hashtags, you can do it through the actual post itself. But we want to make sure we are always adding keywords. You want to add them to your blog post, to your headlines, to any kind of product descriptions you may have. So that way it's always pulling up on Google and when those bots are seeing it they're like oh yeah, okay, these people have this keyword on here and these people have this keyword on there.
Speaker 1:A good thing to focus on is called a long tail keyword. That means like best coffee shop in Dallas, instead of just saying coffee shop, because we want to get specific. So that way, when people are going in, like, hello, every time I go somewhere I want to look up a local coffee shop in that area. So, let's say, when I was in Chicago, best local coffee shop in Chicago. So those people that have used those keywords on their website, on social media through hashtags, it's going to pull up first before people that have used those keywords on their website, on social media through hashtags. It's going to pull up first before people that haven't put any of that effort into it. So, again, keywords are very important. You can start with making 50 to 100 keywords that you would like to see in the searches for google for your, for your business, and then keep those on a google doc. It's super simple. Go look at them. It's also a great way to use for social media content, if you're like what do I want to post about today? Okay, I'm looking at my keywords and I can see here that I want to help small businesses with social media management. Boom, that's the kind of post I'm gonna post today, or that's the kind of blog I want to write about today.
Speaker 1:The next one we're going to talk about is making sure our website is Google friendly, which means that it's fast. It's also mobile friendly. It's even not easy to navigate and we have titles and meta descriptions. If you're kind of on the fence about learning what meta descriptions are, easy, go to chat GBT. Ask it to create a meta description for your business, plus the area that you have in the service that you offer, and it will actually create it for you, for your business, plus the area that you have and the service that you offer, and it will actually create it for you for 100%, for free, and you copy and paste that in. We want to make sure our meta description is different on every page that we have. We want to make sure our title is very clear for that page as well.
Speaker 1:And then, if you wanted to go a step further about making our website Google friendly, we want to use internal links. A great example of that would be if we had a blog post about, let's say, you sold skincare products. So you had a blog post about a certain skincare product. Let's say it's something that helps with acne, and you're like okay, this is the best spot like acne spot treatment product that we sell. You have an internal link on that blog post that actually goes back to the product page for that specific product that you're talking about. So that's how you use internal links. Of course, you can make it as complicated as you want, but that's the best way for me to give you an example.
Speaker 1:The fourth thing we want to do is create a simple, seo-friendly content. This is easy, guys. This is something you can do laying in bed. This is something ChatGPT can help with you. You can create blog posts that are answering some customer questions that they may have, like how exactly is SEO good for my business? That's a question that I would ask or have an answer for on my blog post. Also, we want to have local landing pages with our city and state names so that way it actually has a local search. These can be technically hidden pages on your website or they can be linked on your website and people have to kind of like click multiple times over and over to find it. But at least it's there and google can see it. And and the last thing is is having a frequently asked questions section for search friendly answers. Again, if you're a product based business, just like what Amazon has, right, we have a frequently asked question on the bottom of every single product that you see on Amazon. So they are asking, or people are asking questions, they're already answering them, and then Google sees like, oh, you're a great resource for this particular product and we're going to push that to the top of Google because obviously you care more about your customer, because ultimately, building our SEO is actually building credibility for our business, and that's what Google wants to see that we are credible for the people that they want to send to us, and we want to prove ourselves more credible than any of our competitor. So we have to put effort into it.
Speaker 1:The last thing we're gonna talk about. Number five is get backlinks. This is literally the best way to grow your SEO for your business. You wanna get listed on local directories. That's through Yelp, even if you're in a place that Yelp is not being used. Your chamber of commerce, Like I said, you can write guest posts on blogs or industry websites so that way they're always linking back to your website and sharing your content on social media to drive traffic back to your site. So if you do work with me or you've heard me on other podcasts talk about this we always want that call to action back to our website from social media. That's all social media is. It is a driver to our website. We want people to leave our Facebook page, to leave our Instagram page and go to our website. That's all we use social media for. Yes, we want to be engaging. Yes, we want to be fun. Yes, we want to have something that's educating our clients, but ultimately we want them to use that information and go back to our website and learn more about our product and our service and actually use us and have all those answers there. So let's go over it again To do free SEO for your business, for your small business, your big business, whatever.
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that our Google business profile is updated. You have it set there for free. We want to make sure we use the right keywords. That's on our content for our website. That's going to be on social media, that's going to be on any kind of blog post that you have and, again, google has a Google free keyword planner. That's what you want to use and look up the keywords that people are using in your area. The third one is making sure our website is actually Google friendly. So we have our mobile friendly, we have internal links, we have our titles, our meta descriptions easy stuff like that. The fourth one is creating simple, seo friendly content, which makes, again on our website, our blog posts. We have our landing pages with our city and state on it, as well as answering any questions before people actually reach out to us, because, again, we are that resource for the product or service that we offer our client. And the last one is getting listed on local directories and also writing guest posts or being on podcasts or anything like that. It's always great to have your website on other links and other pages and other websites, so that way. It's always being searched through on Google and they see like, oh, that person actually is really credible, like that's nice, okay. So how do you actually know if this SEO is working?
Speaker 1:Roi in marketing is very important to me and as well as it is for my clients. I want to make sure, like, this is the time, this is the effort, this is the money we're spending to this actual area of marketing. So how do we actually know what our return of investment is? My favorite tool to use is Google Analytics. It's 100% free. You can set up your account behind your Google business profile and then you can run those analytics. I say every 30 days because if we look at it every day, it's a little overwhelming, but if you do it every 30 days, you can kind of compare it and see like, okay, well, I did this this month and I did this that month, so see what's working, what's not working and what you can adjust for the future. So this is literally the easiest thing to do to build your business online.
Speaker 1:I have had four people ask me in the last week on meetings that want to do work with me what's the fastest way for me to turn business around online, or what's the easiest thing for us to have you do to make us have more leads? Or people call us or people click on our website. I keep hearing the terms easy fast, want it tomorrow, I want free leads and ultimately, marketing is all about the long game and there's nothing that you can do. That's like you know what, tomorrow I'm gonna be a millionaire, unless you go viral on a product. That's always possible Not really tangible, but it's something that can happen. But also we want to make sure that you understand and you need to kind of comprehend and understand that marketing for your business takes time and it also takes a lot of different areas to market in.
Speaker 1:I'm going to always say this for the rest of my entire life the number one marketing way is in-person and referral based. So let's say that you have people that have referred you to a friend or family and they go and leave a Google review. Well then, people read that Google review because you've been working on your SEO and they go oh well, that's cool. Well, technically that can be considered a referral. But ultimately we want people referring other people to us because the way that we treat them in a good way, the way that our product helps them, that kind of stuff. So the number one marketing way is always going to be referral based and having people use you because their friends or family have used you, and in-person networking is going to help with that.
Speaker 1:So, to help with all the in-person referral, and if people hear about you, we want to make sure that your website's up to date. Your social media is up to date. It's engaging. It's something that's good for SEO. So don't overcomplicate it. Don't spend thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:And people think I'm crazy when I tell them you can literally do this on your own. They're like. They're like well, aren't you like taking money away from yourself? Absolutely not. Like. I want you to be able to have the power to do this on your own, be able to grow it on your own, because you know your product better than any person in this entire world. You know your service better than them. You have your own mission. You have your own values. Like. You have that personal touch that no marketing agency can actually help you with, or at least be able to comprehend and then turn that into words. So you are gonna be the best person to do your SEO for free. And if you don't have the technical skills to do it, then that's when you can partner with someone like me who understands that you know more than I do and I'm just here on the technical side of it, trying to portray to your clients of what that mission is and what your values are and what you really want to give your client.
Speaker 1:So go out this week, make a plan. Do this on a Friday night, do it on a Saturday. If this is a side hustle, then do it on the weekend. Or if you have a couple of times to carve out in your schedule this week, just try some of these SEO tips for 30 days. That's all I ask. Do it for 30 30 days. Go back and look at your Google Analytics, see how it's working for you, and then do it another 30 days, and then another 30 days, and then really see yourself ranking higher and higher on Google and watch those calls, come in and watch people actually do more business with you because they're finding you through Google and then they're leaving you reviews and it's just. It's a really cool thing to see whenever my clients are watching this and actually seeing it unfold in front of them, front of their eyes, and working for them. So I know you can do it. I believe in you. Go out, do the SEO for your business and you will not regret it. I'll catch you on the next one.
