The Power of An Off-Site SEO Strategy W/ Copywriter Erin Ollila

This transcript has been machine-generated and has not been edited for errors.

We are positioning ourselves with SEO, with everything we do, with the content that we create. We're positioning ourselves to be found by the tools of the future, whatever those tools are. 

Hello and welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show Where we provide tips and advice to 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. We are gonna be talking about offsite SEO today,

and at the same time celebrating this constant state of sickness that we all appear in. So Erin Ollila, welcome back to this show. And yeah, how are you doing? Good. Thank you so much for the introduction. I am so impressed that you got my last name correct. That makes you a true friend Crystal. And I thank you for that.

Hey everyone, I'm so glad to be back. I love this show and I'm just excited to talk about offsite SEO with b and c today. Yay. I love it. It's rubbing off. I feel like we should get a D into this conversation or maybe an A So it could be like A, B, C, D, E in all chatting here.

Yeah. Okay. So just a very quick story right here. I have an Uncle J and an uncle T, and my, one of my best friends growing up, Laura, my uncle Roger was there and she was like, oh, is this your uncle R? And I was like, no, it doesn't work that way. But it was really funny because she thought all of the brothers were initials.

So yeah, that's fun. And on that note, we're gonna talk about three other letters. Yeah, let's go with the acronyms. Girl, we were just chatting before we started, like we always asked, how do you define s e o? And Erin gave us her original definition in 2022, but we wanna update this for 2023. So Erin,

tell us, how do you define SEO in 2023? Yeah, I think that's a really, it's in some ways it's like a both an easy and a tricky question to answer, right? Because in 2023, I, I'd say maybe if I could throw a word after seo, what is this one we did in high school? I'm totally blanking on my English language arts here.

I might have two degrees in it. Blank is to blank as blank, it's to blank. A similessembly. Thank Is it Wait, yes. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, friends, I'm so sorry if I, any of my like English teachers are listening, I'm so sorry. But if I could give SEOs as a simile to anything, it would be the word vital,

right? We are entering a very complicated year, maybe even two or three years right now in the marketing world. There's a recession looming that is actually, it's started, it's happening all around us. We don't know when the shoe's gonna drop. And marketing in some ways gets hit the hardest, but it also plays the largest role in recovery. So we look at the types of marketing assets and tools that we have and the things like social,

the things like, I wanna say, even email marketing, and I don't mean that as complete as social, but they change in a time like this, right? The, the ROI that we see from those tools are not recognized as easily. Where ROI is recognized is search. It is always search, it always will be searched. But I think the more complicated answer to this question is the addition of AI when it comes to SEO and how that is all interrelated.

We've already seen the whole Microsoft Bing chat, G D P really influencing how people search when it comes to working with an AI tool. And Google has already commented just this week that, that they are introducing an AI potential addition to their search feature in this year. So I think when we and the, we as the practitioners of SEO and the listeners who are trying to learn about SEO and really get their feet grounded on how to like use it in their businesses year,

we have to consider that we're not just writing to meet these old best practices of seo. We're writing to follow Google's new e a t suggestion of the whole Google helpful content. We wanna bring ourselves into our story, we wanna make our content valuable, and we wanna make it so that way if someone asks a AI tool a question, that tool can spit out our content.

Now, we're not just competing for the listing, like where we fall on Google's listing. We're competing for how clear is our content so that a little robot tool can spit out the answer and share it with the people that we want to read our content. Okay, So this just reminds me of the entire reason I started working with anything related to seo.

And this was years ago, I can't remember who I was listening to, but what they said was, we are not competing with right now, but like everybody's wanting to talk about like right now or yesterday or whatever. And I'm just like, I bet I loved how this guy was thinking because he said, we're not competing with right now. He we're competing with the future.

When someone asks Siri or someone asks Alexa, Hey Alexa, tell me about this thing, or help me find information about this topic. And I remember voice search at that time was such an abstract idea and it was just really so new. And I thought to myself, I was like, that's what I wanna do. I want, when people think about senior night gifts and they ask Alexa or they ask Siri,

I was like, I want collage wood.com to show up as a search result. That's how it all started. And I just forgot about that until right now. It's funny that you said that and bring it up because yes, like we are positioning ourselves with seo, with everything we do with the content that we create, we're positioning ourselves to be found by the tools of the future,

whatever those tools are. I love that you brought that up because I think it really does segment well into our conversation. Everyone says, when's the best time to invest in seo? And the haha answer, which is totally true, is 50 years ago, like, when's the best time to plant a tree 50 years ago? So when you tell someone that and they recognize that they're potentially starting from square one,

it's like you see their eyes go like straight until a deer in headlights look of, oh no. Because when people hear that, they automatically assume things like, oh my gosh, I have to go and write like 50 blog posts, a hundred blog posts, like how am I ever gonna catch up with this world of seo? But that's not the case.

And I think that's, I want us to encourage the listeners today because we can take content we've already created and then adjust that content for SEO best practices. Of course, everything we say in this conversation, like Crystal just said, we really want you to think future efforts and future listeners and future results. You have a slew of content right now because you've created podcast show notes or descriptions you're using on your podcast players,

on your YouTube channels, on any of those things. Use that content now, like when's the best time for SEO right now? Take everything you have and start working on what you've already created. Feel the pressure to create new work on what you have offsite. And that's gonna play two roles in your whole SEO journey. You're going to get all those back links and we'll talk about this and obviously our conversation,

but you're gonna get all that like offsite good when with seo, and you have the benefit of bringing that back to your actual site. Okay, so I just have one more comment on that because that reminds me of what Selena said with LinkedIn. That was, take the content that you've created on your site and move it over to LinkedIn, create an article or whatever.

And so I just love that you remember when she said that I almost cried because I was so excited. Yeah, and it's just, I think so often, many of us, myself included, forget the O in SEO optimization. You can go back and optimize things and Google and all the other bots are still gonna recognize that as new activity and they're like,

oh, what's going on over here? Still flagging them just in a different way to get to pay attention to the stuff that you're doing. So definitely don't forget the stuff that you've already done, which I am, the message is for me as well as for you, because I tend to do that. And that could be with anything. That could be with like web copy,

that could be with a blog, that could be with the stuff that we're gonna talk about with like offsite pieces. Yeah, it's never too late. And I thought that it was really awesome, Erin, that you brought up up the like, when is the best time to plant a tree? Because literally that's in our, the episode before this one with Marisa.

So it's like that message is getting drills home. Yeah. Yeah. I always like to think about SEO in this two prong perspective, especially when I talk to my clients about it. It's, we have to think of the versions that we're doing when it comes to seo. Like what is the immediate goal? Let's version one, and then what are like the next immediate and longer term goals?

Taking this conversation about offsite seo, like the immediate goal could be optimizing what you've created when it comes to podcast descriptions, your YouTube descriptions, things like that. Goal number two, version two could be going back into the content you've created on your website and then optimizing that to match your offsite seo. And I won't stop there. Friends, version number three Could be Going and reusing what you have in the sense of if you have a podcast show notes on your website that are not really as strong,

but you have now updated the podcast description, think about ways that you can pull from what you've optimized to either create new content on the site based on what you have not starting from scratch, or really adjust the full copy, not just the seo, the copy of what you have. So that way it really does play into that whole helpful content update.

We, I think show notes are one of those really tricky things because we as podcast people, we'd like to know, okay, here are free bullet points of our conversation. Maybe here's a longer quote, let's throw the bio of our guest expert and call it a day. That's not helpful content. Can it be helpful content? Absolutely. But I think that people stop so early and they just do the bare minimum for show notes,

and then they wish and hope and pray that they're going to get those SEO benefits, maybe because they've found a long tail keyword or something like that. But again, whenever we create content or we're looking at optimizing it, we really need to ask, what's the role that this is playing in the world? The whole reason Google helpful content came around is because there is so much junk content on the internet.

We're all part of that. Like we've all played a role in that. I've created junk content myself, even though it was vastly outnumbered by the great content I've created. But we have to look at every piece we create. So if we sit down to write boring show notes, we have to say to ourself, how is this benefiting the person who finds it when they actually search for something with a question?

And that's, again, if we're gonna talk about versions, maybe that's what we do in version three. We look at our content and say, all right, I've done the SEO work, I've done the bare minimum. I need to do more now to make this more valuable. Yeah, I Love it. Absolutely. And I think about that with our show notes because the approach that I've taken with our show notes since we started is,

okay, how can, how can can this be the most beneficial even if a person doesn't listen to the show? Or what questions are people asking that would get us found in the podcast search? Because currently I use all podcast search or podcasts players like search engines. Yeah. For me, that's the fastest way to learn something that's current and relative to right now.

I remember even just this morning, I was on my way home from dropping Ashe off from school and I'm learning how to use Figma because I want to pursue something in UX design. I don't know exactly what that is yet, but everything that I do for my own business and for other people has some element of UX to it. And I just think it's fascinating.

But the, the podcast that I was listening to was actually interviewing one of the head guys at Figma, and they were just talking about the importance of going back to basics and learning how to explain things to a person who really doesn't have any foundational knowledge of that particular process or whatever. And that's helpful. That's where it becomes helpful content because you're able to really empathize with someone who doesn't understand this big wide world,

let's say, of S e O, but you can meet them where they're at, where it's, oh my gosh, it's 2023. There's so many things happening in the world. I need to restructure my business. I need to rethink my marketing strategy. Really taking them by the hand and backing it up to the point where somebody can follow along and go with you.

It's, that's helpful. Yeah, I agree. And I love that you said you use your podcast player like a search engine because that's the whole heart of what we're talking about today. Yeah. Everyone uses the tools that they have, like they would search engines. Now the big question is like Google gonna last in the world, will there be like a,

someone that overtakes Google? Google really is like our babysitter. If you think about it. Google has trained us in the internet day on how to search, how to look for answers to our questions. We're past the encyclopedia days. When you go to a glossary and you try like you already know the search term that you're specifically seeking and you find the page,

Google made it so that way we could keep our minds more open to have a larger the question than a specific like answer, right? Like it would not a glu a glossary page answer. Now, because we've been trained to search like that, whenever we go into a new tool, be it a social media tool, YouTube podcast, we search in that same manner.

We don't search in that like glossary, encyclopedia manner anymore. If we were just doing that, someone would go into to look for this show, they'd go into their Apple podcast player, Spotify and just type an seo. They might not be able to find you from seo, right? That's three letters. If it were a glossary, they would know you'd be listed in the exact spot you'd need to be.

But they might search something like SEO for beginners, simple seo. In the case of this episode, they might be Searchie for offsite seo, right? And because of that, they get presented with options. This is like the whole like 2023 like definition of SEO right here, right then. Yeah. We have to, I have to, yeah, I have to interrupt you really quick just for the SEO piece because they also might be Searchie what is seo?

And that's gonna be Yes, absolutely. Show notes. And so yeah, just wanna make sure I could find that just if you're listening, think about it this way. We talk about listening in Siri and everything, right? There you go. But Crystal just interrupted for another potential search term, what is seo? But so people are doing all of this Searchie,

and then they're being presented with answers and then they are making the decision on what is relevant to them. Here's where copy and SEO intersect and play a vital role together, right? You can do all of the SEO work in the world to get people to look at your stuff, but if you are not enticing them, like there's no hook. If they don't actually,

when they land up, land there, regardless of hook, if they don't feel a connection to whatever is being shared with them, they've got options. Now they're gonna keep clicking past your stuff. So the copy is vital, right? But when we use these tools as search functions, and then the people who create the podcast episodes, the people who like title them,

the disconnect is they're not thinking with s e in mind when they write the podcast descriptions, the titles, the YouTube descriptions, and especially social media, like the practitioners, the creators that are sharing content are not thinking SEO aligned. So how do we then get people, the practitioners to start thinking SEO aligned so that the people who are Searchie the searchers can meet halfway?

And I think Brittany raised her hands, so she knows the answer to that question. I have. I have A thought because it will tie together stuff that Aaron's been talking about and stuff that you've heard Crystal talk about, which is search intent. And really it's like intention, search intent. Like we can get there. If you can get to that spot,

hang out there, really sit with it, maybe even talk to your people, then you'll have such a clear idea of what that search intent is, and you'll be able to title things better, create better hooks, write better. Like everything that we're talking about, it's just gonna tie everything together. Okay, I got excited now I'm done. That was Great.

No, and so this is what I just have a problem with. And I mean I, not a problem with, but just a problem understanding because as a solo entrepreneur who built a Shopify star, a Shopify site, and who is an e-commerce seller, I have never had the luxury of segmenting my responsibilities for my business. Bees fill in the same way over here,

because when you are in charge of everything, whether it's scheduling, marketing, social, all these things, there's no, this is my job and this is someone else's job because it's me, myself and I. And to give you an example, and I've just saw this, this in action with a client, because I was rewriting her Shopify store with s e o in mind because she'd had her shop built by a developer.

And from the perspective of an e-commerce seller, I can't separate those two things. Once I know that the elements of a store exist, it's, I can't separate, okay, this is the developer's job and this is the SEO's job. I know in the past that those have been two separate responsibilities, but the fact of the matter is that people have to realize that those things are converging.

The tools have been created now that have really forced that to happen. So for those who are stuck in the mindset of, this is the one thing that I do, and then I hand it off to somebody else or whatever, I fear that those are the ones that are gonna be left behind by all of these advances in technology because we've got to get a grasp of them so that we can use them together to build the full picture versus just our little spot.

Yeah. And there's a case study that I actually just wrote. I've written eight recently. So I have these stories in my head and one of them is this multi seven, what is she seven figure business owner, whatever. She makes a million dollars a year. She went through this program, she has her, she has a team, but she went through this program because she wanted to understand what was going on.

And because she did that, it had a domino effect. And like other pieces of her business were then able to function better because she got back in touch with something that she had handed off to people. Not that's a bad thing, but it just makes things better and makes things like your little web of all these connections. It's a better web. Yeah,

it's a tricky role to play as an, as a business owner, right? There's that one side of the fence that says you have to wear every hat, which is true, right? Especially if you are a self-employed or a solo printer, you are playing these roles. But there's the other side that says you can hand it off. For me specifically,

I, I believe both are relevant and valid. Right now I'm working with a service provider who is rewriting all of her podcast descriptions and show notes to be seo, follow SEO best practices. Obviously we're not doing like starting from the bothers content there already that we're just adjusting or finding keywords for things like that. But the beauty of it for her is she,

her role is to understand the importance of seo. Her role is to understand what I'm doing so that she can see the immediate o I. And we're gonna throw some huge air quotes on that because it is so difficult to see immediate ROI with seo, right? And I mean by that is she can see that the efforts that I'm putting in are very valuable,

right? What I'm doing, what type of best practices I'm following. So she knows that something is getting done and then it's the wait and see, like how does our efforts play off in the future, right? And I think bringing it back to the whole offsite SEO part, a lot of people say, okay, I've learned enough Now whether, and what I mean by this is whether they're that solo practitioner doing this and wearing all their hats,

or the person who is able to hire it out to someone like CB and E right here, had to bring those acronyms back, okay. But with, regardless of which role they're playing, their question is, okay, I get onsite SEO as best as I can. Like I have a blog post, it has a title, there's a keyword phrase and I use it.

Maybe I fill out the meta description, throw some alt tag like images. That's what I get from my website, but how the heck do I do that off of my website? Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, not to cheapen the answer, but you're kind of doing the same thing when it comes to offsite. If you have control of the offsite content,

meaning if you have a YouTube channel, if you have a podcast, you're approaching the content in the same manner you want to, let's take stay with podcast for a quick second. You wanna make sure that you've identified a keyword or keyword phrase and that you're using that in the title in the podcast description. You also want to make sure that you're using like a linking strategy.

So within those podcast descriptions that you're linking back to your website, if you're hyperlinking, you wanna hyperlink a keyword phrase that's relevant to wherever you're sending them to. But here's where, here's the only tricky part about linking when it comes to podcast. Depending on where people are viewing the podcast content, they may or may not be able to see the links.

So if they're an Apple podcast for example, they can't click on a link, then it has them bring them to your website. There's no hyperlinks there. So potentially, you might wanna set up your podcast descriptions to include both the hyperlink and the copied and paste link you want to send them to be. The reason I say both is because a podcast,

I don't know if the word is correct here, but distributors listen notes or any of the ones that kind of take your content and kind of share it and make it searchable to find you, their backlinking structure works. So if there's a hyperlink, that's a new backlink that you get that comes into your website. So not to complicate that matter, but that's really all what you're doing.

The same thing works exactly like that on YouTube, even though little adjustment title, description, adjustment here, I would say hashtags. Cause you wanna make sure that like you're categorizing your YouTube content as well as that backing structure. Because YouTube, this could be wrong now because of TikTok, but YouTube used to be the second biggest search engine and obviously it's owned by Google,

but YouTube is huge for search. It already has a true seo. Sure in place within YouTube. Not only are you getting the the beautiful benefits of search on podcasts or search on YouTube, but you're getting the secondary benefits of how that relates to your website search. When you link them together, it increases your domain authority. It's having that back links and all of those things.

So you're following the same best practices, you're just doing it in two different places. Okay, so I know B has a question, but I just wanna ask a quick follow up here with the YouTube before we move on. So can, do you recommend uploading the exact same podcast from that you would upload to your podcast player to u2? Can it be the exact format?

Is that okay? And to build that back link from YouTube, can it be okay? Sure. But I would say no. Can It? Yes. But hey can, and people are doing it right now and I'm sure that there are some type of a benefit in the sense of search, right? But then we have to play it like, let's roll that back until search intent,

right? My two my favorite words, you go on YouTube, you search a term, you get this video or audio podcast that's 40 minutes long. Are you going to sit there and watch it on YouTube for 40 minutes? Maybe, but most likely no, because the people who are Searchie for podcasts are willing to invest their time into listening to the podcast.

The people who are Searchie on YouTube want to find out the information that they need. Actually, let's bring it back to what I said, the glossary versus Google, right? YouTube searchers know a little bit more clearly what they want. So it's a little bit more like a glossary search in the sense that they might be saying like podcast s e o,

so they going to find out only podcast SEO stuff. Now the people who are Searchie on podcasts might wanna just know in general about offsite seo. So my recommendation when it comes to this is to create multiple forms of content. Now you have, let's just say you have a 40 minute podcast episode. Hopefully you have the video cuz it's gonna definitely perform better on YouTube.

But in that 40 minutes, I guarantee that you can get at least three, five minute clips that you can upload to YouTube. Maybe for example, it's us trying to talk about what is SEO or like what is SEO in 2023. There's one YouTube clip and then the keywords phrasing and stuff that you're looking for is maybe like YouTube prediction, oh excuse me,

SEO predictions. In 2023, people will be looking for things like what to expect from SEO in 2023. A follow up to that would be how to follow podcast SEO best practices. Cuz we just talked about that a second ago. Like what you would do in your podcast description. So look for these tiny little segments. Use that on YouTube because not only do you have one potential Searchie have a few potential search from each podcast episode we talk about not wasting our time creating new content.

And this is a perfect example of how to do that in order to get the maximum benefit if you can. And you're recording your podcast in a video format, you have the whole episode, you edit it once for audio, and then you go into the video and you edit it quickly to grab a clip maybe for let's say an audiogram, technically that would be a videogram and just a few other shorts,

especially if you have a really short clip. YouTube's new, I forget what it's called, but it's, they have a short clip feature just like TikTok. You could have the one minute clip and use that video benefit cuz that's how people want to search and get their information. But you don't need to create all this new stuff, just use what you have already and use it in a way that is going to meet that platform's SEO best practices.

I Love this. So I do wanna ask, because we kind of talked about it a little bit with pretty much just like how quickly things can perform and for sure with websites, like we know that SEO is a long game. Like it's not something that's really necessarily gonna yield results at the fastest, like what, like three months-ish. So my question is for offsite,

and you can tackle like any of this for offsite seo, for things like Instagram podcasts, YouTube, do you feel like your SEO efforts work a little bit faster maybe on your offsite platforms? Yeah, this is a great question and the Aaron's favorite two words are, it depends. We're just gonna throw this out here. I'm gonna, I wish Gonna get you like a diaper and yeah,

Please, eventually I'll need it. Yes, thank you. So the yes, I think the best and quickest answer to your question is you're going to see slightly faster SEO benefits off platform. Why? Because people are using those platforms as search tools for what they're already looking for. So again, Crystal's trying to learn Figma, she's going into her favorite podcast player and she's Searchie for Figma basics or Figma,

ux, X, Y, Z, right? So she is already specifically looking for something and you don't have to wait on podcast players or YouTube when it comes to indexing like you do for Google indexing written content, got Google's mercy for that. But as a podcast like producer or host, the second you hit published, well not necessarily the second, but very shortly after you hit published,

it is available on all of these podcast players that you've already associated your podcast with. So that's the quick part, right? So if someone puts out a Figma UX episode right this second, we get off this recording and Crystal goes to listen to it, they have the SEO benefits there because it exists, right? The content is written in the description long term,

is it faster Question mark there, right? I guess it goes back to the intent, right? Like you're getting the results of the listener or the viewer. But we go back to conversion. How are we getting a listener to actually come within our sphere, right? If we are looking at our onsite analytics, we can see how people traverse our websites and what decisions they make,

how long they stay on our page, why and how they move around our site. But offsite, we don't have that information. So we have to, as content creators, take a much better and more strategic approach to keeping these people in our world, right? Inviting them back in, sharing with them different episodes that they could listen to. YouTube has it great for this because you can create playlists around like categories or topics.

So you're just cycling people through your content, right? So you create really good content, you cycle them through it and you make sure your descriptions are strong enough that they'll, after watching a few videos they think, oh these people are legit. I really wanna learn more. And then they go to your website. The SEO benefit is one, the back links to your site,

which from a great domain authority other site, but Two People can make the decision on their own to take that step and go into your website. What app, if anybody ever watches this video, they'll see my zoom eyebrows moving all around my singers. Okay? So I wanted to share something that I, that I learned in a recent descript webinar. So descript is a podcast editing or video editing platform or whatever.

But in Zoom there is a setting where you can set your settings to record people individually. So let's say that you just dropped some serious bombs like you just did Aaron, okay? If we had, we had the individual trapped recording, you could actually eliminate the other voices in that recording and utilize it on your own. So I thought that was so cool.

And as you were saying all those things, I'm like, oh my gosh, how many different ways could you repurpose your own audio from recordings that you've done with other people, even like interviews or whatever. So I'm just thinking of all these different use cases for really getting quality clips that like you show people like, oh my gosh, this person is legit.

I wanted to make note of that in case people are listing are not aware of that. That's a setting that you can change in Zoom. Very helpful. It downloads the tracks individually. And then the second thing is it reminds me of that surround sound technique that Lisa from Sim Rush talked about. She said that you can show up in these multiple places.

So like in search, it's not just, it's not just your website or it's not just YouTube, it's not just LinkedIn, it's just all of these different places that you can show up and it's authority building to just dominate a search engine results page for a topic like that in so many different places. So I thought, wow, so interesting. Yeah,

that's super valuable. And I used Riverside now instead of recording on Zoom and they have a native feature that's built in as well where you can keep individual tracks of the like faces or audio and right in the platform. You can edit right there to make your social media clips or any type of video clips that you like. It's super lovely. But the one quick thing like I wanna talk about that cuz we've talked about being the content creator and using offsite seo,

but we haven't really talked about being the not having the platform being like the guest of a platform. And there are so many ways you can use offsite SEO if you are a guest. So what I mean by that is the three of us, we have a, we have podcast, so we have, we're creating content for ourself, but we have complete control over how we use it and how we publish it.

But what if you don't have a podcast? What if you don't have a YouTube channel? Does that mean you completely are like failing when it comes to off say s u? No, not at all. So think about it like this. If you are a podcast guest, you have to be a little bit more assertive to get the type of SEO benefits that you'd like.

But the very easy way to look at it is you come onto someone's podcast, they write about you in their show notes and you provide them links that they'll direct people back to your website. So there's a quick and easy back link. Someone is sending their traffic to your website, but you can be a lot more creative than just say, here's my website,

fingers crushed. I get a backlink from this one of my clients recently I, we'd came up with a really great keyword phrase that I say is I joke about, it's like a job description keyword phrase. So for me for example, it would be like website copywriter, just using that as an example on the show. I could say, Hey B and C,

when you write your show notes, could you hyperlink website copywriter and send them to this specific page because that's the keyword I'm using on that specific page. So it's le it's a super indicator for Google to be like, oh, they're already like, this is what they're indexed for on that page. Like they are that they are a website copywriter and now these 10 other podcast or these 10 other websites are directing traffic to this site.

Not just for example the host like website, but all of the like Apple podcast, Spotify podcasts, all of these places that have really high domain authority are sending traffic to this one person from this very relevant keyword to take it. We talk about versions one, versions two, all these things. To take it a step further, like you C, you're not helpless even if you don't have your own platform.

So if you go on someone's show, Erin is on this awesome show right now, you can create your own show notes for your own website for the shows that you're on. Why? Because it makes you the best guest ever. Cuz you are then giving a back link to the show's like website. You are sharing all of that good Google Juice with the people who interviewed you,

but you're also talking about content that's obviously important to you and relevant to your business. I'm not coming on this show to talk about like my love for Ted Lasso and shit speak, Although we can go there, Which we should. Next time I'm on here episode three of Erin on the show, we'll just talk about how SEO is relative to all of the things that we love.

But you can you understand what I mean though? Because if Google all of a sudden starts hearing me only talk about popular TV shows, they're gonna be like, why is Sarah doing this? This isn't re related to what she normally talks about. So if you don't have your platform, do not think of it as I'm not going to get the benefits that other platforms do and now I need to create this whole new marketing asset and I'll put all this effort into a YouTube channel or a podcast.

You don't be a guest and share your best content for other people's audiences. Provide them with the tools that they need to send you back links and take that extra effort to create your own set of show notes so that way you are publicizing the episode for them and you're creating some SEO at the same time. Yeah, exactly. And just to put another spin on it,

so you could do this through the lens of being a podcast guest, let's say I go back on Erin's show, we do a podcast together. I have a blog all about that and then I'm linking to her, I'm linking to what you could also do, which is what part of what I'm doing this year with my blogs is you could write a case study about being a guest.

You could write a case study about like I'm filling out an application to potentially be considered for being a keynote speaker somewhere later this year it let's say that works out. And I go and I'm a keynote speaker, I could tell my audience about that entire journey. I could tell them from the moment I was introduced to this person to filling out this application,

to having it be approved to going to the event. You get the point. So I could walk them through this entire journey and I'm still backlinking. So even if you're not, just to give you an idea, if you're not a podcast guest yet or you haven't done something like that, there's gonna, oh I, there's a clapping hands feature. Oh cute.

My gosh, I love Zoom. So yeah, like just be creative and think through what might work for you. Crystal, I'm gonna cut you off here. I love that you raised your hands so nicely. But just to add to what Bee's saying a lot, one thing I love about Britney so much is we have a lot of, we do a lot of the same things.

So we always have these great conversations about testimonials and case studies and how they relate to our website, copy our social media, like how we show up our podcast, right? So when I love everything that you just said from the case study perspective and just to bring it back to testimonials as well, people always say, I don't have any testimonials. You mentioned speaking,

putting in a speaking application. A lot of people say, oh I'd love to speak on stages, but I've never really done it before. I don't have people to vouch for me for that. Have you been a podcast guest? Yeah. Have you been a guest in people's maybe like coaching communities, have you been on a YouTube show? Friends Instagram?

That is your proof, right? Instagram lives, You have options. Here's what you do. You go back, if imagine being the guest who goes on a show, they write up their own independent blog post that links to the host website, they share that with the host and say, thank you so much for having me on here. I wrote up my own show notes.

Hopefully what we'll be sharing some like SEO juice here. It was great. Then they go back to the hosts and say, Hey listen, I'm really trying to like focus on speaking this upcoming year. Would you be willing to write a testimonial for me about what? About how I presented myself on your show? Yeah, they're gonna do it. You know why?

Because we're all good people at heart and we really want to like support the people in the world around us. So if someone was on my show and obviously if there wasn't like a horrible issue with the person, for the most part, I'm gonna say of course I would love to write you a testimonial. So I'm glad you mentioned case studies because it is also relative,

right? Like we're talking about seo, we're talking about how to get the back links to show up on different types of platforms and use SEO best practices. But it all relates to the meat of what we're trying to do. And that's just to show our business and ourselves in the best light possible because we care so much about what we're creating, the services we're offer offering products that we have for people.

Other people wanna support you. So if you are great and you are helpful and you are providing the best value to their audience, they're gonna wanna support you in your next steps too. Totally. And I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay. And I'm glad you said that because I wanted to ask a question that kind of went a different direction because the other main way that I've heard about offsite s SEO is backlinks that are not necessarily naturally created,

like what you're talking about. Like I'm learning for the first time about this. I don't know if it's a dark world or what Black hat SEO versus white hat SEOs. I don't, I don't. We have an episode on that. Yeah. Gonna be like I have very firm opinions like Littleness Erin over here is do it the right way and don't be Sneaky.

Yeah. And this is the thing, it's not necessarily black hat because these are like reputable sites that are doing this, which doesn't necessarily make it not black hat. It just makes it surprising to me. I'm like, I'm just becoming aware of it. So I'm, I guess I'm just asking to talk through it right now because I'm talking about like big sites like Forbes or Business Insider or different major websites that have a thousand dollars fee or multi thousand dollars fee for a mention and a back link and I'm like,

is blue? Yeah. So for Clarification, just cuz like maybe the, if you're listening, maybe you're also confused like I am right now. Are you talking about almost like how people buy Instagram followers? No, this is different. Okay. This is like a legit link from a major publication. So it's pay to play if you think about it.

Yeah, exactly. So where are those players? Like where is that happening and how prevalent is it really in the world of backlinks and offsite seo? Is it prevalent? Yes ish. Back in the day of seo, this was a practice that kind of spiraled out of control, which is why Google put it like a big foot down and said enough of this,

stop trying to trick us. Stop trying to like spam your, like all of these comment sites. Cuz actually that's how it started. People could leave a comment and it'd be like, wow, great blog post. You'd love to check out this individual blog post. And there was a back link, right? So that was the way back in the day approach to how back links became spammy.

It's like you said, it's got, it's evolved, right? And in the evolution it's really become paid at a play. And I think what frustrates me so much about that is anyone who creates any type of content that has, that's trying to follow SEO best practices can see what of insult it is to put in the amount of work that they're putting in the right way and following the rules.

Maybe this is my bone to pick with the world. I tend to be a rule follower and I'm very insulted when I put in all of the effort to follow the rules and then see people succeed Completely like not following the rules. So this is a little personal vendetta of why I hate like shady SEO tactics. Truly cuz I think it's not hard to create valuable content.

Yeah. Does it take a lot of work? Does it take time? Does it take effort? Yeah, sure. And I get that. But the truth of the matter is, is like this is gonna get like way too high level here, but sometimes I think we have to think of the legacy that we're leaving, right? Why? Sure.

Could I write a blog post on offsite SEO for my website? Yeah, but how many millions of blog posts, like how many things am I going to write and what's the main reason for this? Like why are we doing all of this? We have to think of like our children and our children's children. Like they're all consuming the content that we're creating today.

And it sounds silly, but like my MFA was in creative nonfiction and I studied memoir and my third semester project was to talk about how we're all creating our own mini memoirs with a use of social media. So if we take that a step further and now think about the rise of the gig economy and the the online business world, there's content and we're kind of creating,

I wouldn't so much call it a memoir, but we're creating our own like nonfiction book about what it is that we do and who we are. So again, we're putting a lot of effort into all of these things, but we have to ask ourself like why are we doing the things that we're doing and what, like where are we gonna feel the most comfortable going out and reaping the benefits?

So if it's that you're paying a thousand dollars to get a link in an article, I personally am not that comfortable with that. Yeah. Is it wrong? Not necessarily. There are many, like there are many things that we do and we pay for when it comes to marketing in our businesses, but I don't think it's worth your time. I don't like why not just pitch an article to Forbes or whichever site then you get a natural backlink for doing the work.

So I think it is an insult to the people who are doing the work to just jump past the line by paying for it. And I don't think that there is a huge ROI to doing so. Okay. So my follow up to that, it's just that for any business owner out there who may have been presented with this opportunity, because these high value sites,

I mean their domain authorities are 70 80, which is huge in terms of Google backlink juice and power, whatever, and getting your own domain authority up. Can the small businesses still compete without doing those things? A hundred percent yes. Like a thousand percent, yes. Yeah. Again, you want to get a domain like that is backlinking to you.

That is a 80 domain authority website. Pitch them content and that content could be video, it could be written content like they take content and publish it, especially if it is content that they're not paying for that does fit the bill of what they're looking for. And you can get paid for writing content for other sites. So guest posting, we've talked a lot about non-written forms of offsite seo,

but guest posting, like writing as a guest expert is a super smart and valuable tool for offsite seo. We talked about it as if, if you're a podcast guest you could write show notes on your own website. But let's take a kind of a step to the side here. Let's say you decide you're gonna write a blog post for Business Insider about offsite seo just based on our conversation.

Let's pretend Aaron's doing this in that blog post. I link to the show notes for this conversation because it's relevant to what I'm writing about for my guest post for Business Insider. I also link to maybe a podcast episode that I did on SEO from my podcast, also linked to a blog post that I've written on seo. So there are many different ways that we can create our own SEO traffic structure.

It doesn't have to be one for one, it doesn't have to be, I'm on your show. So I'm gonna write a show like show notes on my own website. It could be be I'm on your show. So I'm gonna write about the overall topic and within that overall topic I'm gonna send traffic to maybe some other websites because Google really wants us to prove that these stats and these claims that we're making are actually real.

Which is why maybe you say, I just wrote a blog post where I like linked something to BuzzSumo cuz it was shocking about marketing quizzes and there was a stat on BuzzSumo from research that they did on their own. So they want to see us backing things up. So it doesn't have to be only about the episode, for example, if you're a guest it could be a larger topic but you're linking to it cuz you could say something like,

when I was a guest on this podcast, I talked about this exact thing. If you'd like to listen Kara, go listen, there are many ways that you can still utilize the same opportunities with paid things, it's just that you are doing it in a way that's a little bit more ethical. But one quick thing before we end, cuz we didn't talk about this,

but I really wanna have a very tiny conversation about the change and the evolution of social media as it relates to seo. Yeah, Instagram specifically in the past few months said we are prioritizing SEO on our platform. We all have welcome in this hashtag approach to how we do social media. Because if we look at hashtags, they're like categories. So we click on the category a k a hashtag that we want to see more content for.

So again, it is, that's more glossary of an approach versus the like search intent. Instagram has claimed, and I am sure all of the other platforms are really following Sue on the backend that they want to structure it more for search intent. Why? So we get the content we actually want. If I'm Searchie quickly for marketing quizzes, just because I just said that on Instagram,

I might end up getting results where it's like wild, like how to run your business from a shoestring or like how to work from Singapore and run a business how to hire people. And that could be, it could be a quiz but not one that I wanna take, right? Like maybe my intent was that I wanted to know how to write a marketing quiz and taking the quiz is not the right answer.

Writing the quiz is what I want to know. So SEO can do that where hashtags cannot, hashtags are not intelligent enough to be able to understand intent. So I just want everyone who's listening to really remember that these platforms are prioritizing SEO already. So we as the content creators, we really need to be aware of that and to start writing our content so it could be more easily found by the people who are using the social platforms as a search tool.

Because the other thing that's very important as content consumers, not the SEO creators here, we have to remember that what we search for builds the algorithm of what we see a lot. I hear a lot of people, oh I don't like seo. Or oh I'm so frustrated, there's just so much junk in my feed. Train the platform, then train the platform for what it is you do want to see in the future.

It's gonna be a lot more easy cuz again, we're getting that more specific, the intent based things in our feed. But if you don't like what's in your feed at this very moment, you can train it by Searchie for different things. And in the future really think about if you are the creator of the content, how people are going to be Searchie for what it is that you want to provide to them.

And that's where you go to have the future oriented s e o of 2023. I love it. And we definitely have the episode a little bit further back on all of the SEO things you can do on Instagram and just like a quick personal story. So I have in my Instagram bio title, not the handle, but like the bold text, whatever that's officially called,

I have it, it says s e o and case study copywriter. Guess what? Literally like five times in the last week I've had people in my dms or people leaving comments or people finding me elsewhere and they're like, oh, I saw that you're a case study copywriter. Oh, I saw the thing about case studies. Tell me more. Like it just opens a door,

right? Make sure that you're utilizing all of those areas where you can insert the keyword even in the comments that you're leaving on other people's content to make the point about or to bring it back to the point about it doesn't have to. Oh yeah. Instead of just, that's great. It's, I love case studies too where I saw I've been doing that a lot and it it pays off.

Yeah. And the one thing that I meant like when I mentioned this I, and when you're talking about this, we're talking about the content we create that stays in platform. So like our titles, people might be Searchie for that within Instagram and chatting us, chatting with us about it in Instagram or other platforms. But the other thing that we can't forget is that certain parts of social media platforms are indexed by Google.

This is relevant for Twitter, for LinkedIn, for Instagram. So that like the bolded text, I don't know what to call it either. I think it's like part username and part like description. Title, yeah. Is indexable. So you're putting your job title in there. For example, especially when I mentioned the keyword, like a job titled job description like keyword,

it's indexable. So your Instagram feed is going to come up in Google. Very important place to do this is LinkedIn. It is like the most important place. Why? I guarantee if you search your name LinkedIn's gonna probably be the second result. Yeah. Underneath your website. So that's just your name. That's not even an actual SEO keyword phrase. So when your name comes up,

it's the second link on Google. If someone ha already knows who you are and they wanna learn more about you, wouldn't you want SEO to guide their perspective of who you are? We have have that what, five seconds or less to make a first impression. SEO helps you make that impression. There are multifaceted ways to think about SEO when it comes to off platform stuff,

even on social media. And I think that if we're really like talking predictions, we need to be very cognizant that SEO is no longer simply just a Google game. SEO is going to be pervasive and everywhere in any place that we show up in our business. And instead of just saying, oh yeah, that's something I'll do later. Cause everyone loves to think there's no urgency with seo.

This is my bone to pick. There's no urgency. But if everyone can sit there and think, I'm not gonna do this later, I'm going to learn at least the basics right now so that I understand the conversation, then you can take all of those basics and put them to play in whatever you do and create in your business. Boom, Boom,

sha<unk> I Hope you guys are listening because that was so good. Was amazing. Yes, so good. I think we all did a nap after, though. I know. Seriously, we're all gonna shut down Zoom now. I'm gonna take a nap. So after you're done listening to this, just rest for a little while. Let it sink in.

Yes. And then come back and re-listen again to take some notes. Yeah. Oh, this is so good. Come back and do a worksheet for each one of these with those really great takeaways because it's like, there was so much great stuff in there, Erin. Oh My goodness. Put 'em in the show notes. Put 'em in the show notes.

We talk, I'm sorry, it'd be such a like repetitive wheel right now, but it's like we talk about the versions one, two, and three. So when we're creating content for ourself, do version one, decide what is version one and publish it. Don't hold yourself back because you might wanna add to it later, or you might have a better idea later.

Do your version one. And then like in this instance, let's say, and we take our nap after this call, and then Crystal wakes up and she's, oh, remember Erin said that thing? Go back in show notes and be like, Hey, I listened to this again. Here's a worksheet. Like I sat down, I took notes on my own episode.

Here's a few bullet points on the things you wanna do, or here's the things you wanna know. Add to the show notes, right? That's still repurposing content. Love it. That's just so good, girl. I'll just like, whoa. Okay, so where could people find you, Erin? Because I know you're just establishing yourself in such an incredible way right now.

So I know people are gonna be looking for you. Where should they go and tell us the phrase we need to use? Yeah. Oh my gosh, I wasn't prepared for this. So when it comes to listening to podcasts, you're already in your podcast player right now. Don't go anywhere else. Don't take those EarPods out of your ears. Just use the search feature and search for talk copy to me.

It's my podcast. We talk about all things marketing, messaging and SEO Two, I've even had, I need to get Crystal on the this show. Bee's been on there before and we talked about testimonials and turning them into case studies. Crystal, you're coming on this year, but come on and listen to what us We'll have a blast over on my podcast.

Say hello on social media. And the beauty of Google and the beauty of SEO is that even though I have a tricky last name to pronounce and spell at this point, I Google knows who I am, like we're buds at this point. I have established my se myself on the big old G oh g l E. So all you have to do is literally type in my name,

however you think it should be spelled. It's Erin Oola, and Google will find me and direct me to you. So spell me wrong, doesn't make a difference to me. But the beauty of SEO is if you do things like podcasts where people are listening, they don't have the letters in front of them, the words in front of them, if you're established,

people can misspell your name and still find you. And that's what we really want. Anything else we need to call attention to? No, just go up there and do the work. Don't beat yourself up. Literally do the basics and yeah, it will pay off. So you want that tree to start growing. Plant it. That's it in the show End.

The show. Okay. Bye. Nice talking to you everyone. Thanks for listening. 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.