A Deep Dive Into SEO & Client Obsession w/Kerrie Fitzgerald

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

welcome back to the simple and smart SEO show podcast. We are here with Kerrie Fitzgerald, and I can't wait to talk to you, Kerrie! Our paths have intersected and crossed so many times over the last few years.

And so when B was talking about having you on, I was like, this is awesome. So Kerrie, welcome to the show. 

B, how are you ladies? Say hi. 

Hi. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. And it does feel like a long time coming to be back on your podcast. 

 It's been like three years since. You went on your very first podcast, which happened to be my old podcast, which is so crazy. 

And then last week we were both a part of a summit for Shopify sellers. 

And now we're recording this podcast. 

So I was just wondering, like what you thought of the summit and did you have any takeaways from that experience? 

Yeah, I think, I'm in the stage now where I'm just going for these different little pockets for visibility. I know your podcast SEO, which is amazing, an important topic. 

And yeah, I think it was fun. I think, I'm definitely as you probably know, I know you are to team Shopify and I just love everything Shopify.

So I thought it was pretty cool. I think it's cool to collaborate with different people that have different skill sets and, create these little summits that can help people like learn a ton of different things. So yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. What about you?

 I loved it. And then the other thing we had last week our previous episode was about branding.

And storytelling. And the different brand stories that we tell. And I've seen you talk about it as well. 

Again, just that intersection is so neat. Cause you were like the queen of telling brand stories. 

So I really liked that in your presentation.

I don't know if I ever told you this, B, but Kerrie was the one that pushed me over, the hump to get on Shopify. 

Because I was really dragging my feet then. And, but I knew I was like, Oh my gosh, we love to talk about Pinterest. And at that time, Shopify was the only platform that had an integration with Pinterest.

And so Kerrie's I love Shopify. It's the best you need to do it. And I'm like, ah, and now I just can't imagine life without Shopify.

 No, that's funny to hear because I can't imagine that. 

That's so funny. I love it. 

 It was good to see like how other people do their Shopify websites.

And it was a lot about digital products. I'm really comfortable with physical products. But digital products is something that's a little bit new. So it was good to see how people set those up as well. 

Oh, nice. That's awesome. I'm glad you got some good takeaways. And yes, brand stories and all that, just sharing your story.

I think it's so important because it just truly humanizes your business. And I think. In the land of all things Amazon, you need to have a brand that has a face share your face, share your story, it's not boring. 

It's interesting, and it what, it's what humanizes you and makes you different from competitors. 

That's what I was just talking about. Last week I had my launch for my case study training, and that was one thing that I was talking about, was like, you have to set yourself apart, and the easiest way to do that is story. Also, if you want to get found online and increase your visibility, hello case studies and telling stories with SEO woven in.

So it's just a no brainer. 

So cute. Also your dog.

So cute. I love it. 

 Want to tell us who you help in the world and how you help them? I think we've put the pieces together, but you can put a little bow on it.

Nice. So my name is Kerrie Fitzgerald and I work with e commerce product based businesses.

Sometimes I help people start their business, which I love so much, but I mainly help people grow through organic marketing and non paid marketing channels. 

So not really SEO, but I do a lot with email marketing.

I do a lot with customer loyalty, customer retention strategies, and a lot of things in between. I've definitely pivoted a lot over the last few years. When I first started out. 

I think the way Crystal and I connected initially was I had this really cool, when I first started my second business, three and a half years ago. I had this Pinterest freebie and it was like one of those hack jobs in Canva just so much. Stuff and crazy colors and like a billion fonts. 

I mean it's embarrassing but to be honest with you. I got so I would get so many people that would get that freebie and respond to me and be like this freebie was so awesome. 

Multiple connections that have started from that pinterest freebie, which is really funny. 

And yeah, so I do a lot. I have, courses I have membership programs.

My newest thing that i'm honing in on is this whole concept of being obsessed with your customers. I have a new book coming out in October that I'm so excited about. 

It's called Customer Obsession and it's really all about how you build brand loyalty and how you build these like uber engaged customer super fans for your product based business.

And it's something that came to me with my first business, which was a product based business. And I didn't use advertising. I had to really rely on scrappy strategies. And one thing that I learned really quickly is, when you treat your customers, when you give them a good experience, they come back for more, they buy more from you.

They post about you on social media. And I saw that early on with my business. And then I like leaned into it and I really just figured out all these little strategies on how to get your customers to do things for you by treating them well and being obsessed with them. So a lot of the stuff I talk about now is creating this whole like cult, like brand concept.

And what that really means is just getting customers to be obsessed with your brand. That's the stuff I talk a lot about now. 

I love that and I definitely relate to it from like the service based side of things and especially even like thinking about being in my massage practice. 

Like that's one thing that like you get people talking about you, whether it's a product or a service, and then it's like, how do you capture that and then use it.

I love that. Yeah, it's so true. 

 The other thing I was thinking about is like with SEO, you can get people to your website. But once I started getting traffic to the website, that's when I realized, Oh my gosh, there's other things that are very important as well. 

That's when you start diving into user experience and it's okay, why are people, getting stuck or not finishing the checkout or that type of thing.

And then again, like you said, the customer service, customer element of the customer experience That's really important as well, because if you don't have that's not going to build the trust that you need to have brand advocates, so it's it's funny how, SEO is just the tip of the iceberg, but, I don't want to go too far into SEO because I know bees needs to ask their questions.

I know I was going to say, okay, before we dive into it, you may or may not know, but I love asking all of our guests, What they think of or how they explain or how they define SEO and there are no wrong answers. But what 

would you say to that? Love it. Okay. So I define SEO as how you show up on how you show up on Google really.

Obviously there's a lot more that kind of goes into that, but I always think of SEO as like this matchmaker. So someone goes to Google, they type in something, whether It's, pink scrunchies or, personalized wood initials for my kids nursery. Plug in Crystal's business

and Google will like, let's find all the matches for those things. And then they give you a bunch of results. So I think as SEO is that as just how you show up on Google when someone types in a search or query and Google spits out a bunch of results. My nutshell, nutshell response. 

No, that's perfect.

And that's, that to me, when you said matchmaker, I'm like, duh, no wonder I love SEO because it lets me be the ultimate matchmaker 

that people know me to be. Yes, thank you. Thank you for that. I'm going to figure out how to put that in my messaging. 

Yeah, I know. Isn't matchmaker the best word, though?

It is. It really is. You go to Google, you type a question in, and then Google gives you a bunch of things. And if your stuff is optimized for SEO, Your blog posts will show up. Your products will show up. Your product images will show up. And it really is this matchmaking little service. Without, it actually being a matchmaker.

Perfect. 

A couple of win examples from this. Okay. So first from my Shopify store, my e commerce store with the wooden letters and giant gifts for seniors. Every time an order comes in, Shopify does a really great job of identifying the source of. The click, or where that customer came from. And so I love to screenshot that and say, Oh, it was Google.

Every once in a while, it actually is Pinterest. Like Pinterest is converting more and more, which is crazy to me. And then sometimes there's these direct. Conversions or there's no attribution because of maybe privacy or people searching with their, not their tracking blockers on or whatnot.

But then just the other day, or I think it was actually yesterday, I write for an accountant and she asked everyone. How did you find my affiliate bonuses? And people started typing in the chat Google.

That was like, because we've been working really hard on her blog and in writing articles and stuff. So that was really exciting. 

That's amazing. It's cool when you can actually, when you put all the effort in, because I know SEO is definitely a long game strategy, but when you put the effort in and then you actually see results from it, I think that's amazing.

So that's awesome. 

Yeah. And you actually having, that's one of the things we're going to talk about is how you ended up 

ranking number one on Google with your product based business. So you want to tell us about that journey a little bit. I'd love to hear it. 

Yeah, so I think it was around. I had my business.

So my business was called the dapper dog box and it was a a pet eCommerce business and like an eCommerce store. So I sold a lot of different things, but I had the business for about a year. I really honed in on building this Instagram following. I had, I don't know how many I had at that point, maybe like 11, 000 followers or something.

And I was doing like brand ambassador contest and getting People to promote my brand. But I realized, okay, I need, if I need to grow more, I need to start doing other things. And so I started figuring out and my background is marketing, but I never did anything with SEO. I never did anything with, affiliate marketing or anything, but anyway, I started looking into, okay, how do I grow my e commerce store?

Basically all this. Stuff that, that we teach people now. And I saw, okay, SEO. And I was like, what the heck is SEO? And so I started looking into it and I, just dove deep into it. 

I'm very creative, but I also love data and analytics. So you give me someone's Google analytics and I will be very happy diving through all that information that most people like cringe at.

But I really liked SEO cause it's, it has that data stuff. Or data driven, but you can also be creative so you can do the keyword research. You can write cool content, write blog posts, et cetera. 

So anyway, I basically discovered SEO, had no idea what it was, tried to like deep dive into it. And then I basically, I think it was like my husband's friend who had a marketing agency.

I had a chat with him and he was like, okay, you need to use, go use HubSpot. And in the end, I think that was not really a smart decision, but that's fine. I went to HubSpot and I did a lot of their tutorials and trainings about SEO. So anyway, long story short, I started really thinking about my business, my customer, who are my customers.

I created a couple of these like content buckets. And one of my idle customers for my business was someone who had a golden doodle. So again, I know. this is six years ago. Golden doodles are much more popular now, but six years ago, they definitely weren't as, they weren't as popular. So I started deep diving into at the time HubSpot and doing keyword research and looking at, okay, Golden doodle, where are some pockets of opportunity here?

Cause with SEO, it's not just, you can't just pull any key word and then create content around it. You have to have a strategy, which is why, people can work with you ladies, of course. And so I figured out, okay, a lot of people are searching for. toys for golden doodles and just different things around toys for these specific breeds.

So I was like, okay, I'm going, and it was a, it was not a high ranked term, but there was a lot of people searching for it. So I was like, okay, that is that little pocket of the sweet spot that you're looking for with SEO, low competition, high search. So I was like, So I basically doubled down on creating content around golden doodles.

So I created in particular the, my one blog post that got me a ton of traffic. It was basically called something like five dog toys for golden doodles or something like that. I forget the exact title. And I wrote this article. Obviously inserting my own products, my own links. I think I did a couple affiliate links from Amazon or something for some of the other products.

Anyway, fast forward, I optimized the whole thing. I really, learned on titling the product images correctly and, having the correct URL and, the meta description and the title and all that kind of stuff. And soon I just started getting traffic for it. And then within a year that was my number one Most visited page other than product pages.

And I got 20, 000 website visitors per year from that one blog post. So it just was that in most of my other blog posts didn't do that. So I don't want to make it seem like every blog post I wrote, I was getting 20, 000 one percent bid. That is not at all. Most of them, I got nothing. That one blog post just killed it.

And then again, when you have a blog post that, that is doing well and optimized, then you can link that with other. So I was linking back, linking that with my other blog posts, putting it on Pinterest. Et cetera, et cetera. So it just fueled the fire just to continually get more traffic from that blog post.

And then as I wrote more content around golden doodles, again, thinking about your idle customer and not. It's not about your product necessarily. It's about answering questions that your customers are searching for. And so I just continue to create a lot more content around golden doodles and in particular, like my content buckets, so toys for golden doodles, traveling with your dogs.

Planning parties growing their Instagram account. Those were like these content buckets that I wrote on. And yeah, I mean anything with the goldendoodle, I was getting a lot of traffic, but that one post was like my, was my star. So 

I love hearing that. I am so curious though, because a lot of people who listen to the show and then end up messaging me and Crystal.

Yeah. They have avoided SEO for so long because it sounds like a daunting task. It sounds like it's going to take so much time to learn it and figure out how to implement it. And Crystal and I have both created tools, which of course are linked if you want to understand how to use it. And we try to like speed that up for you, but you were doing this, like going this alone, teaching yourself, implementing things.

How challenging was that? How long did it take you to feel like you could, you had mastered it? Could you touch 

on that a little bit? Yeah. I, and I want to touch on the importance of SEO. It doesn't matter if it feels scary to you. If you're listening and you're like, is it important?

Will I get return on my investment? Just do it. Just do it. If you want to get off the social media bandwagon where you have to show up and post on Instagram every single day and not rely on advertising to get people to buy your products. You have to leverage SEO. It's one of the most magical things.

And again, think of your business right now in terms of traffic. Imagine your business getting 20, 000 website visitors from something that you created one time. And then it just builds like it's a, compound interest. You just continue to get more and more traffic. So I have to stress that before I answer your question because I know a lot of people from my own audience are the same way.

They're like, Oh my God, SEO. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do keyword research. It's going to take too long, blah, blah, blah. But if you have a business that you're serious about growing, then get your butt. And do SEO on page. It's like the most important thing. And if I was starting a product based business again, literally day one, that business launches, I am creating weekly blog content.

I am optimizing every single page, doing all the keyword research. every single thing because that is the way to get traffic without relying on advertising. And I don't know any other ways that you can truly get so much traffic from creating something one time and then walking away. It's truly magical.

So I just want to say that because I just feel very strongly about doing things in your business that Like you get compound interest from you do it one time and it keeps working for you. So I'm a huge fan of anything that falls into that category, including YouTube which is probably a different conversation, but I think with SEO.

I didn't try to overwhelm myself with all SEO. I really focus on page. So keyword step one, keyword research, understanding my customer, which that's actually the first thing you need to know who the heck is buying for me. What are things that they're searching for? And what are things that relate to my product in business?

So when they search for something on Google, they then are going to be brought back to my website, my blog, and then say, Oh, you sell. Like I'm searching for how to use oil free face wash. Oh, you sell oil free face wash. Cool. I'm going to buy it now or I'm going to join your email list. So it's just really important.

So I focus on keyword research and then just simple blog posts. It's just literally keywords, looking at what people are searching for and creating articles around that. I kept it super simple. I didn't dive into anything outside of on page SEO. So I know there's all sorts of other crazy things like backlink, getting your backlinks on other people's stuff, which I think is super important, but I try to keep it simple for myself.

And just do a couple of keywords that I honed in on and just started creating weekly or maybe two to three blog posts per month. And I would say I got traction after maybe a few months to six months. It takes, SEO is not an overnight success. It doesn't work like that. It has to index.

But I would say within a few months I did. And because I was using HubSpot. You guys probably have your own things you recommend. I love Uber suggest it is, I think is like the most. Absolutely phenomenal tool I've ever used in my whole life and for 30 bucks a month or whatever it is.

Neil Patel is just perfection. I love him. 

I love when Kerrie loves something, like it is all the way. All the way. 

I know. I love that. 

She's like saying words that I would normally say. 

So I'm like, keep going, say things. 

 I am grossly obsessed and I will talk about you constantly, but yeah, I think it took a few months to six months maybe to get traction, but then literally it was probably within a year when I really started to get a lot of traffic from that stuff.

So, in addition to blogging, I made sure my website pages all had the keywords and I did titles and meta descriptions. So I really spent a little bit of time. I wouldn't say a lot of time. I kept it simple. I had a deadline and I just said, okay, within a month, I'm going to do the best I can to do all of my on page.

So my pages, titles, meta descriptions, optimizing images, alt text, and then the blog stuff. And so I would say six months. I did see some traction, but it probably took closer to six months to a year before I was really driving traffic. 

And then by the time I sold my business at the third year. 

Again, 20, 000 website visitors from one blog post, other blog posts, 10, 000 visitors, things like that.

So it, I just think you have to do SEO. If you're not doing it, you're literally missing an opportunity. And what are you waiting for? Stop posting an Instagram, go spend a month and focus on SEO. 

Yeah. And it sounds like you felt pretty confident pretty quickly about it too, right? And because you were keeping it simple. Like it seems like. 

That's the thing. And I see a lot of this with people that are in some of my programs now is when you try to do... when you think of SEO and you're like, Oh, I have to do everything has to be a million keywords and I have to write a million blog posts and I have to update every single page. And, I think people just get really overwhelmed with all the things when in fact it doesn't have to be so complicated.

So I don't think it was that hard for me, but. I also didn't overcomplicate it. I literally was like, okay, I'm going to just focus on a couple of the golden noodle keywords and then, dog subscription box, things like that, and just try to keep it simple. And I think because, to be honest with you, my business was about dog.

stuff and dog people. So for me, I had a lot of fun researching keywords. I thought it was, I still actually think, I think keyword research is super interesting. I love it. I love it. I feel like we're all probably nerds about that, but I was writing content about something that I had a genuine interest in.

And I think that's the other thing too is if you're trying to write content around what you sell or like your niche. And you don't like it, that could be a bit more challenging, you can always outsource it of course, but so yeah, anyway I had a good time with it, I think I, because I kept it simple, 

there's a couple of things that you said that I really wanted to point out. And I don't know, but you're going to have to contribute where you learned most of your, I'm thinking maybe Uber suggests, but for me it was SEMrush. 

SEMrush had tons of trainings. Yeah. And they have really great content trainings. 

Like SEO led content or content led SEO, however you want to say it.

That's where I fell in love with SEO because it was a no brainer or connection of oh, I have a product I should write related to my product so that people who want my product will know about it and come by for me. It seems so dumb, but it just wasn't, initially what I thought I needed to do.

I thought I needed to be on Instagram. 

I thought I needed to be 

on Whatever social media channel, but it never occurred to me that, Oh, I need to write articles that promote my product. So that's where I learned. Be.

Yeah, I actually learned a lot from Meg Casebolt. And she had this, I remember it's funny that we're recording in October, but she had this se October email challenge thing. And she was diving into SEO and she's the first person who explained how to break down a Google page or Google search results page.

And I was like, Oh, snap. All my stuff is here. So that's why I make sure to tell people about that because you know We are using paid tools. It sounds like Kerrie was using a paid tool and is using a paid tool, but you don't have to there is Google and if you understand how to break that down and what you need to pull from that and what you need to pay attention to and then you're out like a Couple of Google extensions that are free.

I mean It's, I like making things accessible, no matter if that means like explaining things different ways, having video, audio, written content, or making things available for like free or low charge or, high charge paid things. Yeah, that's my little spiel. 

Yeah, and then the other thing, when you said this sweet spot of SEO, I'm like, that.

That'll preach right there. That's like the perfect example, and I'm always picturing Venn diagrams, but when I talk to people, I always talk about like your perfect product, because some of the most important learnings I think I've had over the last couple of years, not only was SEO, but also being profitable, and just understanding your profitability and understanding like, Like you said, is this a product or a project that I'm excited about?

Is this a topic that I'm excited about? And then is there money to be made here? Because no matter how excited you are about it, if you're not making money, it's a hobby then, and not actually a business. So it's like where those. Things intersect is like the perfect spot and then where they intersect with keyword research and what other people are looking for is like you said, the sweet spot of SEO.

So I just wanted to stress that and point that out. And then the benefit of, writing an article that resonates with your audience for that perfect product is what then gives us a running start in our marketing, and I think it's amazing because. Like you said, it's an evergreen thing that's always working in the background of your business.

I love to tell people, give every page a job, give everything you do in your business a job. If it's online, that's an opportunity for a marketing employee to be doing something for you all the time, 24 seven. 

Now we have this running start and then we can spread it around like to Pinterest or another platform like YouTube.

And so I like to think about workflows. And so what you just everything you said to me just painted this picture of okay, get your running start. And then optimize what works, and focus on your own stuff. 

Like people talk about backlinks. I'm not against backlinks, but I've always taken the position similar to you, like with your own products that I'm focused on my own products.

I'm focused on my own website. I got enough problems to deal with, with my own stuff. And so while I believe backlinks are important, I think a lot of your success came from the fact that you were Linking to your own products within your site and internal links are as powerful as external links.

And a lot of people don't realize that.

Yeah. Also brought up like a couple of things that are just so easy to get started with. Like internal linking, like the SEO title and meta description. I love that you said that because that was where I started with my site.

Once I was like, what's SEO? And started diving into it. I was like, Oh, let me go give these things a title and a description. I didn't mean to cut you off, but that was brilliant. 

I think part of SEO that I. Find from at least people that you know that I work with is, I think people don't understand the power of it. And I think, I don't know, at least for me, I'm preaching to people. You have to have things in your business that can help you get sales. And get traffic without you having to show up every day.

So I, for me, SEO is such a no brainer. I am YouTube. If you can make it work for your business that doesn't work for everyone. I love YouTube. Obviously second biggest search engine owned by Google. Absolutely. Amazing. I'm obsessed with YouTube. I don't know if you guys, I don't know if you guys touch on YouTube with your business or podcasts, but there's a specific scrunchie business and I use them as an example all the time when I'm doing anything with organic marketing or organic traffic, but this scrunchie company, they, killin it on Tik TOK.

They have a YouTube channel and all they do are videos. And I'm going to say that they're really boring, so I'm not going to say who, what scrunchie company is because I don't never try to insult anyone super boring, but they do the same videos like pack an order with me and it's like pack 500 orders with me, ASMR.

And all it is them in their warehouse. It's packing scrunchie orders. And I tell people, there's a point to this, I promise, but I always tell people like show your behind the scenes because you think it's so boring. Trust me, people love it. And I refer to this scrunchie YouTube account. They have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Okay. All they do is post videos of themselves packing orders in a warehouse. I'm not even joking. Bye. All like when I see all that on their YouTube channel, all I can think is the amount of traffic that these people get when someone types into Google scrunchie or, whatever, different scrunchie things, they are just killing it because of their YouTube channel and all those YouTube videos.

When you go to Google and you search for something, YouTube shows up. So not only do your images show up, if you title them correctly, but YouTube shows up. So anyway, I'm always looking at this business. It's in disbelief, but also genius because they found something that works. They doubled down.

It doesn't matter if you think your videos are boring. If your audience doesn't, then you keep putting those pack in order with me. So anyway, I just wanted to share and everything, hundreds of comments. I don't get it, I don't get it.

People don't want to think that hard.

Like I love asking questions and thinking really hard about stuff. And that's why I call myself knowledge vomit because I just decided to embrace it. 

I'm just like, let's just think about things really hard all the time. But most people are like, no, like I need a break from that.

Yeah. Number one, they're making it really easy for people to connect with them without having to use a lot of brain power, so that's like the perfect. Pastime on social media. 

And then second, this is what I've come to realize as an e commerce business. I'm not competing necessarily with other people who sell wooden letters. And I'm not necessarily competing with other people who sell what I sell on Etsy.

I'm also competing with the experience that people have had online with other businesses. And so words know, like, and trust, just Oh yeah, no, and I can trust. 

But that is an illustration of know, like, and trust because people know what they're going to get, they see how their package will arrive.

They see what the product's going to look like. They like what it looks like, and then they can trust that they're going to get what's in the video. 

And so it's so simple, but it's so powerful because it hits on every single thing that someone needs to know in order to feel comfortable from buying from a brand online, that they can't actually.

Touch it, they can't touch the product, but they can see it over and over again in that 

comfort.

Everything that you just said, I think when people are, the level of trust is so important for an e commerce business, especially. If you know you're new or someone discovers you and they don't know who the heck you are when they can just go to Target and buy a scrunchie or they can buy one from. I don't know, one of the celebrities who, sells scrunchie products.

So I totally agree with you. But sometimes you ever just think as a product based business, you are killing it to create content. And then you see this scrunchie business just, doing pack and order with me in a warehouse. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers. That would make me just I think if I had a scrunchie business, I would, I don't know what I would do.

I don't know if I would just replicate their strategy or I would just be angry that they're getting so much success from really boring videos. 

And like we could use, I'm always like, how can I use this as inspiration? Keep it simple. Just like what Crystal said, keep it simple. We are, we do overthink things.

I've got two hands raised. We overthink things, we make it more complicated than it needs to be. People just want to see what they're gonna get and they want the behind the scenes and we're like, no, you don't really want that. You want me to explain all this crap over here. No, just keep it simple.

You want my boring white background photo with a product versus a warehouse packing order. Obviously the warehouse one is gonna, there's connection, there's trust, you can see humans sitting there packing orders for you.

Yeah, they're doing a lot of things right. I just sometimes. I'm shocked at some of the things that work for some of these businesses, but. 

Kudos to them. Like I said, killing it. I think they're doing a lot of smart things. 

And sometimes that's just how our minds need to be reassured that this person. Whether it's a service or product. 

That they know what they're doing because they do it over and over every day for other people. 

I wanted to ask you about 2024.

I am all about content, I'm all about Surfer SEO. 

I would be happy to come speak to anybody. It's such a powerful tool that combines everything regarding SEO and keyword research. It's amazing.

Before I started using it, I didn't understand how to link or write cluster centered articles.

And I'm doing it now, like I said, for one of my clients. 

She's just experiencing this exponential growth. 

And it, like you said, it's a running start. 

Like it starts off slow, but then that snowball starts going and of course.

From the client perspective, they're wondering like, how is this really benefiting my bottom line? 

But especially if you have a high value offer. 

I think for all of the roofers and just those high value purchases really benefit from SEO.

Could you imagine, if you're averaging like a 10, 15, 20, 000 sale. Or average order value, and you implement SEO, I'm like, that to me is a no brainer. 

Like, how much would you pay to get a couple extra 20, 000 sales a month? 

That's what we did with my dad's replacement window replacement company.

We started using SEO and he was like, Oh wow, this is cool. I actually need to check in with him. That's a good reminder. I need to check in with him to see like current wins.

We need a case study on that, for sure. 

Do you see any trends for 2024 like in the online world for marketing and promotion? Whether it has to do with SEO or something different? Do you see anything looking forward?

I think just in general and overall I think ads are just getting More competitive, more expensive. And I really think people need to be looking outside of, I have nothing wrong with advertising. If you have someone who knows what they're doing and they're trustworthy and you're, they're actually showing you.

Return on investment through analytics and all that using advertising. Awesome. Cool, but I just feel like you need to know other ways to acquire customers. And so I don't know, for me, I think more customer experience, I think that's going to become more and more important with more people starting online stores.

E commerce, just continues to boom. I think people really need to be caring about. Things like packaging they need to be caring about things like email marketing. When someone orders from you, this isn't a, like a one night stand type of situation. We need to be bringing people back in and sending them emails, welcoming them to the brand.

Hope you liked your order. By the way, we have a monthly photo contest and we want to see pictures of you wearing your sweatshirts or we want to see pictures of you with your, wood frame and your nursery or your kid's room or whatever. So just like things like that, that I think will continue to be more and more important. 

Just involving your customer with your brand.

I don't know if I would say it's a trend, but I think it's something that's going to become more and more important as more people have online stores and more people have Etsy shops and things like that. So I think customer experience is one. 

And I think two, video, we all love to hate video so much. But I do think video is going to become.

A necessity, unfortunately, and I know some of you listening are like, no, that's not true. I think it is. I don't know. I could be wrong, but I think video you have to humanize everything, whether you have a product business, whether you have a service business or you have a roofing company, there needs to be a human behind it.

We need to see a face. We need to have a connection, we need to be able to trust the person. And so a video, there's nothing that can sell a product or offer like video can. If you have a video of you taking a wood frame, walking up to a wall, hanging it up, like hanging it on the wall, walking away, and then seeing this crib with a beautiful, your kid's name displayed on the wall.

Imagine that and the emotion evoked. Better yet, if we have a kid in the video, it doesn't have to show their face. It could be the back of them smiling. Or actually, we can't see them smiling if it's the back of them. Anyway, you get the point. Maybe it's the mom smiling or the dad smiling and then the kid's sitting there.

Maybe there's like a golden doodle laying on the ground. We're gonna really set the tone to evoke emotion here. That evokes emotion. Verse. a picture of a letter on a wall. Nothing. 

Like there's no emotion evoked. So my point here is leveraging video to evoke emotion with your product, but showing how it works, showing how people can use it.

And then just, I like to call it idiot proofing something. Where we make it so when someone sees the product, they can envision it. They can envision themselves using it or they can envision it in their own house or their, whatever your product is. So I think video is just going to be more and more important.

So I would say those are the two things I think, but really, all of the marketing, you have to get your product in front of more people. So whether it's SEO. Or creating blog content or, videos on TikTok or whatever. Visibility is the number one thing. So. 

You mentioned like having a face and like humanizing, even if it's a product based business, this is something that like drives me bananas because even So I started out as a massage therapist before I was a marketer and copywriter.

And I would go even for myself, or if I was helping someone who I had a client relocate to New Mexico from North Carolina, and she was like, I don't know who to go to. And I was like, here, I'll help you. So that was also dipping a toe in the SEO waters of who can I find? And what's their site?

You go to their website and their face isn't there. Yeah, if I'm going to spend 60 to 90 minutes in a room with you would like to know who you're gonna be. 

Same thing like with the product if I go and I learned that, you know I love pet lab co for my dog with all of his products. 

Having like faces. Seeing other dogs Understanding the story behind these things.

There was someone else who reached out and they were going to start a dog product supplement kind of company. And he shared his story and I'm like, this is amazing! We need to know the story. We need to see a face. If there's a dog in there, it's even more amazing. It just makes you more lovable.

Just have something. If you're not ready for video yet, at least have your face somewhere. You may think that it's not important, but it really matters to people who are going to I want to spend dollars with you and want to interact with you. I know it seems weird, but we are humans looking for other humans.

So just show your face. Just do it. Just once.

 I couldn't agree more. And I just really feel like that you have to do that now. And once customers get used to seeing faces on websites, and then when they go to a website, there's no face, there's no about us, we're like who's really selling this product?

Is it some weird guy in some other country? Or is it Brittany who's selling massage oils from her beautiful studio? 

I don't know.

It was real beautiful. If we can see you that it's weird, but it's instant trust. 

It really separates you from an Amazon store. When someone goes to Amazon, it's like they don't care who. is behind the company. They're like, I want free shipping. I want the product to be at my doorstep tomorrow morning because I'm going on a camping trip and I need my new water bottles.

They don't care who makes it, but when someone is going to your website and they are looking for a specific product and they're willing to spend 5 on shipping or however much you're charging, which are probably charging too much. You got to show a face. You have to give them a reason to want to buy.

Your story, your face, why you started the business, a mission behind the business, give them something. Otherwise, why are they going to buy from you when they can get it from Amazon for probably half the price? Free shipping. I can order it in two clicks. No matter where I am, I don't have to go and get my credit card because you probably don't have paypal connected amazon makes it easy to buy.

So if someone's gonna buy from you make it easy for them to buy. 

One more thing and then i'll be quiet But like recently crystal you'll remember we had the conversation with one of our guests and he was like Oh, I don't have an about page and here's why. This is what the about page is about this is what's your mission?

What's your story? It does matter. So I, that's why when he brought that up, I was like, I'm just, I disagree, but everyone's entitled to their opinion and their strategy. But I was like, no, you're probably doing about pages wrong, but it's okay. 

After the Shopify summit, that's when I understood, I was like, the about and the story is.

Infused throughout, especially if you're someone like me who has multiple products. 

It's yeah, the story behind nursery letters is going to be completely different than the story behind a senior night gift for a graduating athlete. 

And so those stories need to be told throughout.

And how to get beyond that low word count without just creating ridiculously long product descriptions that absolutely no one is going to read. Is by adding that story.

But, so if someone wants to see your beautiful face, Kerrie, like where can they find you? 

So you can find me on Instagram, probably the easiest place. Kerrie. A. Fitzgerald and that's with K E R I E. My website KerrieFitzgerald. com and I have. My own podcast, which you ladies have to be guests on, of course, we can talk all about SEO and yell at my audience for not doing it.

Six Figure Product Business Podcast. Happily. Sorry to say that again, I talked over you. Six Figure Product Business Podcast. And we will have a fiery conversation where we'll be yelling at everyone. SEO, why you need it. Yeah, you can find me at those places. Can I bring 

a megaphone? 

I'm kidding. I'll 

just sit it in 

the background.

Bring a megaphone. I yell at my audience a lot. 

End of the day, it just makes your life easier. It's like why we fight the things that are in the end going to make our life easier is probably one of. The great existential questions. I don't know, but whatever. 

You could record a whole other podcast on that.

Yeah. 

Thanks for being here, Kerrie. Appreciate it. So when you chat 

with you again, thank you for having me. It was so nice to chat with you.