I'll teach you to go back and look at the top.
If they're blogging, if they're not, obviously start with the websites, but start with the most traffic and be strategic with your time and intentional with your time.
Start with the blogs that make you money.
Hello, and welcome to the simple and smart SEO show Where we provide tips and advice, improve your website's search engine ranking.
I'm Brittany Herzberg, SEO copywriter for holistic health and wellness pros who want to show up as the answer to a Googled Question.
And I'm Crystal Waddell, an e-commerce seller and content creator. I help business owners communicate the value of their products and services through content. So you can make more sales and grow your business.
We are business besties who love learning and sharing what we've learned.
So what are we waiting for? Let's jump in.
All right.
So what was your, what was your next question? B, I'm sorry, I don't even know if you got through your first question because I jumped in front of it.
Well, no, we got it because we, right, because we asked her to describe or define or whatever, SEO, and then I don't know what train track we just went down.
We were talking a lot about my business and insight with Google Analytics, but we should probably talk about what the VA could actually do.
Yeah, we could.
Here's a question for you. So I know that SEO is something that you train your students with, but do you see people come to you with any base or foundation of understanding of SEO?
What is the thing that people are like, oh yeah, I know this about SEO. Is there anything else?
I very rarely have that person who does that, who knows it all already. That's usually an area where they're feeling weak and I give them exactly what they need to know to get started.
So the whole point is they can implement their client's marketing strategies.
So I'm not teaching them to be an SEO specialist. There will be another training, especially with a lot of the tech.
I give them the rundown, optimizing with the Yoast plugin and file naming and meta descriptions and all of that. So they know what to get started and then track this for their clients.
You can just keep going and going, but my SEO module's an hour and it's probably too long, but it's one of my favorites.
That's awesome.
I think Crystal and I both have some things that are similar and some things are slightly different, like where we would suggest people start.
Where do you start with people when it comes to SEO and like learning it?
Well, a lot of times we go back and optimize what's already there.
Because there's usually clients who aren't don't have it. They have nothing.
Like I said, they have a website designer who does nothing. And especially I'll teach to go back and look at the top.
If they're blogging, start with the most traffic and be strategic with your time and intentional with your time, start with the blogs that make you money and work on those.
And then I really love doing the research for ideas and kind of steering clients toward that.
Clients will tend to ping around.
And I'm thinking about my lot of creatives. I have a furniture painter I work with and she's always doing in-depth tutorials and I have to bring her back and like how to paint furniture, how to top coat furniture, you know?
And I have to bring it outta her and remind her. And it's just like, sometimes they don't see that, right?
You don't see what's in front of you. And so having a VA who can use your SEO tool to do the research for you and track things and tell you like this is working like, look, this is growing.
Like all of that's helpful. Well, okay. So you just validated me. I have to, you know, as a teacher, I have to show you guys my work here.
Oh my gosh.
I downloaded from Ahrefs, the URLs and the keywords and everything that I was ranking for.
And then as I was thinking about it last night, I was like, okay, now that I've got most things cleaned up and I know the direction that I wanna go, what should I do next?
And I thought, you know what? I need to optimize those pages that have the highest traffic value. I'll start there and just make those, make sure those are perfect.
And then I'll work my way down. So as you are saying that I was like, I just did that. You know? So I wanna say thank you for that.
But, one question I had about working with an SEO assistant or virtual assistant, how do you give access or how do they get access to people's websites?
And how does that work? I mean, because are they, you know, writing meta descriptions and then giving it back to the person and saying here place this here on your website?
Or do they actually have access to the back end? How would you handle that?
That's why I use versatile marketing assistant. So you can trust them with basic updates with WordPress.
I do Kajabi and WordPress, but you know, Squarespace is easy to figure out. You can give logins for them, and add them as users.
You can add them as users to Google analytics and they can have their own thing, but that's nice when you can track them in case something like, they mess it up, you can see who did it, or you can revert back. But yeah, I get, I totally give them access to that.
That's always, my biggest fear side note is like,
I'm gonna go to someone's back-end. I mean, Emily and I collaborated on a project and I was like, Emily, please like, watch me. So I don't screw this up.
I've been on the phone with GoDaddy, like bringing the website back, looks like a plugin that broke it. But I mean, every time it happens, I get smarter first of all. But yeah, I mean, it could happen, but there's always some backup, you know, to use.
It's just figuring out how to access that. Or who to call. Yeah. But I keep the number. Yeah. I usually try to keep the marketing assistance inside the post or the pages.
Like they're usually at this mailroom level. They're not usually designing something from scratch, you know, like they're going in there and optimizing, and I think that's such a good way to learn and get somebody learning your site and where things are and what your content is.
And if they can start with the content that exists, if they're a go-getter, that will just open up doors for them to step up in many different goals for you. So I have a piggyback or follow-up question for that because I wrote down what are helpful things for business owners to have in place as far as SEO goes so that the VAs can actually help them modify or optimize those pieces.
Oh, that's a good idea. I don't know if they have to have anything in place like they-
Well, I'm even just talking about the accounts or, you know, what kind of, what pieces of the strategy should they have.
What are the basics that you are able to say, here, person, please help me.
Yeah. I think they kind of help decide what some of those words are, but I mean, a go-getter can go in and expand on that too. What I find is a lot of, a lot of people don't even know that.
So I would like to be able to just get access to the SEO, like at this level, like the client piece for the SEO, I do Uber suggest, and then I give my team access and I'm like, go in there, figure it out, like what's ranking and what's working.
So I'm kind of not really answering your question cause I don't think you have to have anything. I think if you have someone who has a head start and understands it, they could just run with it and own that.
And I think having that spreadsheet, like you have where you can track it and see over time, I know that data is in Google, but like I like a spreadsheet and I like to see where the positions are. I like to remember what that word is.
So two follow up questions that are one actually one in a follow up question.
Well, no, I'm just thinking hello, for all three of us, this is an opportunity right there.
I think that is an amazing freebie. That would be so helpful to a business owner,how to prep for an SEO assistant. You have to be able to have an intelligent conversation or you're gonna end up with a website that has no meta descriptions, you know? Right.
So it's like, okay, what are the things that you want to be able to check off a list?
Even if you don't know exactly what they are, you want your person to be able to understand what those things are and you want them to be able to show you where they've been implemented.
So I think that is actually a really, really great idea and helpful, you know, line of questioning and, and thinking.
And then the other question lost it, but maybe I'll find it a little bit.
I have something to add to that. I had a lady from my course and I'm gonna throw her under the bus right now because she will not listen to this.
I got her a job with a big wig helping go back and optimize the blogs.
And she never reported what she was doing.
All you have to do is say, I fixed 10 blogs. Ttrack them, say what the keyword is. You could even document the word before, like document the ranking before.
And that way you get your own results as a freelancer. Right?
Sure. So you can use that. But yeah, she wasn't reporting anything.
And this client is a huge person and was like, what the heck? And she kept saying, I just wanna know what you're working on.
It wasn't even like a mistrust. It's just, I wanna know this is happening because it's one of those things. That's so long term, you don't see the results immediately anyway.
And the big wigs are the ones that want to track this up. Sorry, I, this is one of my Hills, this grinds my gears to no end. I have yet to work with a client who hasn't been messed over by some strategist, marketer, copywriter, you name it.
And it drives me bananas because it's not that hard to track what you're doing. Even if you feel like you're annoying the client, I will fire off emails. Hey, da, da, da, da, today.
I'll say what I did, what the page was the date, like, whatever it is, I might also have that on my own spreadsheet, but like letting them know, just so that they are aware that you are doing something.
Yes. Sorry, Crystal. I'll stop talking. Okay.
Well, no, that's okay. That reminded me of what my question was. So that was the question.
How often do you follow up? You know, like how often do you do the report on the keyword changes or updates or that type of thing?
Is that something that you have a recommendation on?
I feel like monthly. I feel like that's not something that client, when you think about busy business owners, we don't need a weekly report.
We don't, we just wanna know it's getting done. So I feel like whenever you invoice, that should a hundred percent be part of your invoice.
And so I have this whole blog catalog that I do and I give to my students in my course.
And it's like, what is the top traffic? What is a ranking blog? What are the keys?
Like, how is it monetized? What's the call to action.
What's the podcast or YouTube? So I have it all mapped out.
And just to be able to show your work that will help with any kind of, what's the word I'm thinking about? Like, if you get in any kind of argument about the work being accepted, You need that backup.
Yeah. Yeah. You need that as an independent contractor, you need to say, look, this is what I did.
Because a lot of that, I'm sorry. A lot of that comes from just like the business owner. I told you I was gonna interrupt a lot, the business owner, just not knowing, I don't wanna call it ignorance, but it's like, they just don't know what they don't know, afraid to ask.
They're always afraid to go back to What? It's an ego thing.
It's such a, like an ego trip because it's like, well, I have to pretend that I know what I'm talking about or that I know what to expect.
And just not even knowing the right questions to ask, You know, who somebody, you know, and I'm not gonna throw her under the bus right now, but she hired some SEO company to help her.
And she's very disappointed. And I don't, I wonder if they did any of that, cuz I think it's one of those easy services to be like, yeah, I did it.
And you just don't know and was it done? Right. And they don't have the knowledge to course correct. You know?
And that's the biggest thing. It's like just a big giant man behind the green curtain or whatever in the wizard of Oz. You're just like, here's some fancy stuff. I can do this stuff for you, but then there's never anything to back it up.
And the business owners feel, you know, cheated out of something, but they, they don't know what to say or how, like you said, they don't know how to course correct.
Because they're like, well, I hired you. You're a professional. I'm supposed to just trust you. Okay. But, I just want to be devil's advocate here, too.
I think sometimes the goals shift, you know, especially like, as you learn. Because I'm thinking even from the perspective of our e-commerce site, just recently I've been able to understand some of this reporting from Google search console or Google analytics. It’s saying, okay, these are the blogs that people are visiting.
And after talking to Ashley and after listening to Emily, it reinforced this idea of like, okay, what retargeting campaigns can we start running as a strategy. To say, okay, you looked at this blog and I wrote this content specifically to meet them before they need us.
But now I need to continue moving them to where they need to buy our product.
And so that's the new strategy question. That's the new strategic things that come in.
I'm So glad you said this because I just did a VIP day with an ad set up for a client a couple weeks ago. I told you I do everything.
And one of her really good traffic ads is to a blog. And that's amazing cause you captured that data and you can retarget them.
So yesterday, I was setting up my little traffic ads and my blog is getting 2000 hits a month. I'm gonna just start sending different audiences there and testing it out.
But yeah, like this is a strategy that I think works because I think we're tired of being over marketed to and in a certain industry.
And you're like, oh, an article I don't have to opt in. I don't have to get an upsell and an order bump and know that there's like a huge pitch coming.
It's just a freaking article.
And so I'm gonna see, I'll report back to you. I'll let you know. Yeah. Let us know, because I think that that's also kind of what you just said is also why those case studies have been rising in the marketing world because people wanna see stories.
We don't wanna have to opt into crap. We don't wanna have to watch something or get the order bump.. I hate, I hate order bumps.
And I don't use that word very often, but it just makes my skin crawl. I'm like, I understand it, but can we not?
I just wanted to get this template thing. That needs to be on the bumper sticker. I Love it.
We're gonna put it in our stuff, I'm sure.
Oh, I have to tell you what happened to me last night. Yeah. I'm a DCA affiliate for Amy Porterfield. Right? My audience is a lot of virtual assistants who don't wanna spend money.
So like, my sales are like, you know, like they're not doing great and I'm questioning everything right now. But I got this random person who DM me yesterday said I was Googling DCA affiliate bonuses, and I loved yours.
And it was all because of SEO ladies.
So that's what made me what made it stand out to me because I was like, I missed that keyword is really what it made it. Stand out to me.
Look, You're still doing good, though. Aren't you on page one with that? Yeah. Ranked it number three. That's awesome.
She wrote it like two weeks ago. A week ago. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I know. I know. Right. It's pretty crazy.
Okay. So before we go, because we have to go here in just a minute. There's two really important questions I have. We've talked about it just a little bit, but the relationship between content and SEO, if you could sum that up in about 30 seconds, what are your thoughts on that? The relationship between content and SEO.
Okay. I need five seconds.
Okay. SEO first. Okay.
That's what I do. I don't sit down and write a blog. I mean, my beginning blogs were terrible, but I always start with the SEO on that because I wanna be able to write quality content and be able to naturally talk about it.
I'm not about keyword stuffing and it, to me, I think like the journals in my brain, the story editor of me, like I can write about anything under the sun. Right.
So I need to have that focus and know the purpose. And so yeah, for me, it's SEO first. It always has been the, where I have sucked is my own podcast.
I tried to do cutesy titles, like Friends with the one who, and I tried to be like a therapist who now copywrites testimonials.
And I'm sometimes just a rule breaker. I try to be rebellious. Sometimes it just doesn't work and it's not working.
But here's something with that too. Like you can go back and change the titles. Crystal and I have recently been playing with the descriptions and the titles. It's okay. You're not married to that.
Yeah.
And really any piece of content you could modify. Exactly. And I've updated things, added the year cuz the year helps, and you know, change the publish date. But absolutely.
If you're thinking of SEO first, when it comes to content, you're gonna be answering the questions that are going to help you show up as the answer to those questions on Google page on.
One of the first tasks I teach my virtual assistants and it's in one of my little opt-ins it's like resizing, watermarking and file naming photos.
You talk about something you can give to VA cuz you don't want large images. Right?
That slows down your site that affects your site's speed, which affects your balances. So I teach them and it's, it's a little bit of repetitive baby work, but you get your foot in the door, you do your rite of passage. You learn how crucial that is.
You never put a four megabyte headshot on your website unless it's like your press page download. And so we start with that. So that's something a VA can help with. Right? Like doing those repetitive tasks that still are crucial to your SEO. You have to go back and fix it.
I took a course from SEMrush that was content led SEO, but really it is SEO led content, you know? So here's my last question. And I mean, we, this has been amazing, like Brittany knows the coolest people and I'd like to say, I knew you too.
I'm just so glad to meet you today because this has just exceeded my expectations.
But what do you think about when you were talking about the people coming to the website because of the blog or whatever.
What do you think of the power of that in terms of first party data and having people coming to your website? Like how powerful is content in that way?
When you think about first party data and going forward in marketing online?
Are you talking about a credibility authority factor or like domain authority or like what do you mean, more from a customer access?
You know, customer data access point of view, you know, because like Facebook and all of these other places, they're struggling with this concept of third party data.
So it's like when you have people visiting your website because of SEO, how powerful is that?
I just want your thoughts.
I think that's what's put me in the big leagues with some of these big coaches, because I'm doing this, I'm taking the effort.
That's because of my marketing background.
A lot of gosh, I'm like digging my, my counterparts, but a lot of them are admin executive backgrounds and I'm like, I know what I'm doing here. And it's a matter of time, but I know that that's like your first impression is like, I'm looking for a specific answer and I find you and I try to like track how people find me, how they apply, how they find my Facebook group and the top ones right now is Google search and YouTube and they're related.
Right. They're related. Yeah.
So, I think it's like something that a lot of people aren't doing. And I think as things swing and ads get more expensive, I think this whole organic traffic's gonna be sexier and people are gonna wish they would've started three years ago.
Yep. I totally agree. Whoa, I totally agree. Sound bite. Yes.
Although I might have been talking excitedly..
One thing I wanna mention, I know you need to go, Crystal. But one thing that I helped clients do a lot as a smart marketing VA was when they did a Facebook live. When they did a podcast I was transcribing that, putting that article, not writing from scratch, but using my marketing brain to help my client find the right email catchers.
Find the right next click through thing, embed the right piece of content. But I'm taking something the client already did. They never have to get involved. Like I can take your words, even if you've voxed me and I can help you create the content.
And that's something that your smart marketing assistant can do for you because we all know by the time you write the blog and format it and do the graphics, I mean it's a whole day.
Like it really is a couple hours. And so your VA can help you with that and help you play catch up.
Cause if you, you have, you're probably sitting on mounds of content right now that you could reuse like this podcast.
Like I could come back and reuse it for my stuff, too. Yeah. You know, you should do that better. I will. Yeah, I Will. Good. Okay.
So the last thing we should probably do is there is a resource or where would you want people to go find you and go get your stuff?
Okay. Couple things. If you wanna hire a marketing assistant, you can go to my form, hireaunicorn.com.
It's ranked on Google and you can submit your job opportunity. I really try to keep it easy. You just add some tasks you need help with. You don't need to have this formal job description.
And I will share it with my work group.
I have about 90 men and women who are freelancers with different, you know, specialties, different things that they can help with.
And then they'll just reach out to you and you won't be inundated like a Facebook group with 40,000 VAs.
So you can hire a marketing assistant. And then, if you are thinking about either sponsoring your VA and letting them level up into marketing or if you want to become a marketing assistant, I have a course called the Unicorn Digital Marketing Assistant School.
There's a wait list. There's a podcast. There's a Facebook group. There's a YouTube channel. Like all the freaking things. But if this is something you want, like come find me. I actually have the most fun on Instagram at Emily Reagan PR.
And I'll point you in the right direction. I love it. And don't worry. We'll put all of those links below. In the show notes. Which we learned this week is actually called show descriptions. Yeah.
After telling you something and I'm sorry, I can't stop talking, but I had a big, big business owner.
She's a multimillionaire and she's a friend. And when you Google her name, she doesn't come up.
She’s a bodybuilder and I'm like, girl, like we need to be able to find you first like easiest thing to rank for. And I think you guys should talk about the PR aspect of backlinks and just throw that in there for your next podcast episode and tease it out.
See cuz I can, can go make my reel, well re-highlight the reel that I made this week about it. Oh, I missed that one on IG. Watch.
Is that a part two? You're coming back, Emily. Oh my gosh. I just pitched myself. Yeah.
Okay. All right. Let's tell the people, this was amazing.
Don't worry. We're gonna have Emily back so she can tell us all the things with PR. It's gonna be amazing. I can already tell, but Emily, thank you so much.
It was so nice to meet you. This was a great, great conversation. Yeah, let's do it again.
Thank you. Yes, please. Okay. Bye people.
Okay. Bye guys. Bye crystal. Thanks for joining us today. If you like this info subscribe before you go. So you never miss out on something related to SEO. See you next time.
