Sizzling Summer SEO: A Mid-Year Recap with Crystal Waddell

0:00Crystal WaddellI've realized, you know what, instead of trying to change how Amazon sees me as a seller and change how they do business.

0:05Which was just ridiculous saying out loud, I decided to embrace what Amazon is.

0:10And what Amazon is, is a distribution channel.

0:13So not only do they help me take up. space on the search engine results page for collage and wood, but they also handle fulfillment.

0:22Welcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence.

0:37Thank you so much for being here.

0:39Let's jump into another great episode.

0:41Welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell.

0:46Today I'm doing a little bit of a summer recap. Because I don't know about you, but I feel like this summer has flown.

0:53I just wanted to take a minute to take a deep breath. And number one, celebrate some of the things that have happened.

1:00And take a moment to kind of reflect on this first half of the year.

1:04And then forward to the next six months.

1:08Personal goal number one took some time off this summer, which was great and went on a vacation with my family.

1:13We went on a road trip from North Carolina to Kansas.

1:17Then to Texas and then back to North Carolina.

1:20And the great thing is, I was able to take some time off.

1:24While having just a little bit of work because I really do enjoy working.

1:29And I continued to have my SEO squad meetings on Wednesdays.

1:33But had a great time with my parents, my brother, his kids.

1:37And a lot of road time with my husband and my son. Which was awesome.

1:41And then we really got to relax down in Texas. In a saltwater pool and the hot Texas sun. It was almost perfection.

1:49I was able to stay on track with my orange theory workouts, which is awesome.

1:53Did not miss a workout while we were on that road trip.

1:56And then just recently we went to South Carolina so that Asher could go to a parkour slash ninja camp.

2:05And I'm not sure if you heard, you know, not that this is, In our future, but.

2:09Just so you know.

2:10Ninja is going to be a part of the 2028 Olympics.

2:13Or at least that's what I heard.

2:14So please feel free to fact check me on that if I'm wrong.

2:18But I thought that was super neat.

2:20Hosted my SEO squad in that hotel as well.

2:23So it's just been an amazingly fun summer.

2:27Back in May, I received some photographs for our new photo props.

2:31Which is the 2025 collection.

2:34So what was awesome is that we were able to get those photos back in May. And so I was able to update the website before the first or second week of June.

2:44And I was able to have those photos on the website while we went on vacation.

2:49So what that meant was instead of June being a super slow month, we actually doubled our sales from last year.

2:57Or more, I think it ended up being more than doubled our sales last year.

3:01And we're able to bring in extra revenue that we weren't expecting in June. Because of those images being ready on the website.

3:08And then I also made a bunch of pins for Pinterest so that people knew that our 2025 photo props were available.

3:15And then also, the football, volleyball, soccer, all fall sports, senior night pins.

3:23Got those up on Pinterest because we're gearing up for the end of the fall sports season.

3:28Because that's a huge time for us. It's almost like Christmas because that's, you know, senior night for football and all of those sports.

3:35So super excited about that. And then also I checked my Google search console data yesterday.

3:42And come to find out in 2023, we had 1, 876 clicks to the Collage and Wood website. And this year we have 3, 700.

3:57I'm not really super great at math, but that's almost like a doubling of clicks from this year to last year.

4:02So I'm thinking, okay, if we had that many clicks in July, I'm really excited to see how our SEO is going to pay off.

4:09And then I created a new website for the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. I think I've shared about that.

4:16But it was time to split crystalwaddell.Com and SimpleandSmartseo.Com.

4:22Now I am a part of an SEO summit, an SEO bundle.

4:27That's going to be going through the end of this month.

4:30So I have to leave my crystalwaddell.Com website up until then.

4:35But I'm going to be changing that to reflect my availability for speaking opportunities for 2025.

4:43And then everything Simple and Smart SEO podcast related. Or SEO squad. Or just SEO in general has been moved to Simple and Smart seo.

4:52Sounds like a good time to do a cold read if you ask me, right?

4:55Digital marketers, this one's for you. I've got 30 seconds to tell you about Wix studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises.

5:03So here are a few things you can do in 30 seconds or less when you manage projects on Wix studio. Work in sync with your team on one canvas, reuse templates, widgets, and sections across sites, create a client kit for seamless handovers, and leverage best in class SEO defaults across all your Wix sites.

5:22Time's up, but the list keeps going. Step into Wix Studio to see more.

5:26Okay.

5:27So made the new website on Wix. Woo woo. Super excited about it.

5:31Also got approved by Wix, to become a Wix partner.

5:35So that was pretty awesome. And the timing of that was fantastic because I just pitched a new client who happens to be using Wix.

5:42Another thing, not only is the simpleandsmartseo. Com website up over on Wix.

5:47There's also a new members area. So members of the squad, you have a new members area.

5:53And this month, if you're interested in joining the squad, I have a promotion going on right now that if you join the squad, you get a free 20 minute brand interview.

6:03Now if you're wondering like, what the heck is that?

6:05Go back and see the episode with Erin Sparks. I think it was like two episodes before this one.

6:11A brand interview really is the foundation of your SEO and your, brand story.

6:18So that you can use it, in your owned asset optimization across your website and all the collateral for your business.

6:25So if you're interested in joining the squad, definitely check out Simple and Smart SEO dot com and click on SEO squad. In the upper right hand corner.

6:33And you'll get more information there.

6:35If you're currently a member of the squad, you get this as well.

6:38Next up...

6:39Another thing that I did this summer was I joined this SEO bundle.

6:44Which will be preceded by an SEO audio summit.

6:47And next week on the podcast, I'm going to have Dolly DeLong.

6:51She's the one that organized the audio summit and the SEO bundle.

6:56Shout out to Dolly for creating this really crazy cool bundle where you're going to get like tons of SEO resources.

7:03The bundle has a cost associated with it, but the audio summit's free.

7:08And the audio summit starts next week on August 13th.

7:11In the summit, I contributed what I call the SEO first aid kit.

7:16It's the first three things I think you should do once you decide you're committed to improving your site's SEO. So yeah, the SEO first aid kit.

7:27The last thing that I did that was a little bit different from last year was sending stock to Amazon.

7:34Now for a long time, I have been treating Amazon like Etsy.

7:39And I've realized, you know what, instead of trying to change how Amazon sees me as a seller and change how they do business.

7:45Which was just ridiculous saying out loud, I decided to embrace what Amazon is.

7:50And what Amazon is, is a distribution channel.

7:53So not only do they help me take up. space on the search engine results page for collage and wood, but they also handle fulfillment. So what I did was I sent some of our best selling props.

8:05Which are our three foot senior script font, our three foot 2025s and our two foot 2025s. These are props that photographers use for senior photos.

8:16I sent those to Amazon, which they then distributed amongst their fulfillment centers.

8:22And so those have now been received and checked in. And I'm super excited because now every sale that I get from Amazon.

8:29They are in charge of shipping it and they are going to help with, you know, any returns, any customer service issues, anything like that.

8:37I did put in a postcard that had, you know, thank you note for me and information about our company.

8:43And an invite to actually purchase directly from us at collage and wood. com in the future.

8:49This is a great way, for us to kind of multiply our capabilities. Without having to hire someone else.

8:56So super excited about that. And I can't wait to report on it in the future.

9:00So. That was my summer, 2024.

9:03I would love to hear how yours went and I hope that you are having a great time optimizing your website.

9:09Don't forget that the SEO audio summit is coming out next week.

9:14Link will be in the show notes and SEO bundle will be out shortly after that and available until November 1st.

9:21So until next time, guys, keep moving forward and don't get overwhelmed.

9:25Just try to optimize one thing this week. Your future business will thank you!

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