SEO For Beginners: What You Need to Know to Get Started If You're a Content Creator or E-Commerce Platform
SEO is not that deep. It's not that complicated. It's pretty honestly pretty simple when you understand how it works. It's also way more intuitive, like I said, and way more creative than most people are pegging it out to be.— Michelle Pellizzon
Episode Description
SEO doesn't have to be boring - it can be magically intuitive too! Today team Holisticism is breaking down SEO 101 (SEO for babies) and why it's helpful to understand it whether you're creating content for your business or your brand (even if that's just lil ol' you). Stick around till the end of the episode for this week's Witch of the Week, as we grapple with the complex ideas of body neutrality in an age of digital dysmorphia.
In this episode we discuss:
SEO: the what, the how and the why
Keywords, search intent, Google's algorithm, Google AdWords
How to optimize your content to rank higher on Google's search
Algorithms can be racist, sexist, and oppressive
Knowing your ideal client before honing your SEO
Michelle's Witch of the Week: Bethany C. Meyers
Digital dysmorphia and body neutrality
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The show notes for this episode can be found at www.holisticism.com/journal
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Concepts over hacks. Those are always going to be better. - Michelle Pellizzon
We're also in the age of digital dysmorphia and I think it's going to be interesting to see where we go with body neutrality, because that's not an act of practice that I have, but I wonder what the rise of digital dysmorphia in general, if we're going to also see a rise in body neutrality as being very similar to mindfulness, where it's a practice that is more commonplace and more people are talking about it consistently. - Wallis Millar-Blanchaer
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
If you geeked out on learning about SEO, have a listen to "Highly Intuitive Content Creator$: The Difference Paid vs. Free Content" where Michelle breaks down the what of paid vs. free content, how they inform each other, and how to intuitively navigate making your own. Now that you've got SEO basics in your toolkit, you might as well go deeper on defining which type of content will best serve your goals, audience, and rank higher in search baby!
SHOW NOTES
[00:00:13] Topic for today is SEO for beginners
[00:19:05] What do you know about SEO?
[00:20:35] There are different search engines that we use but the biggest search engine that we use on a daily basis is Google. Google is connected to all other search engines and it’s like one search engine that rules them all
[00:21:40] Michelle started learning about SEO in terms of content and e-commerce when she was working at a startup
[00:22:04] As a small business owner, you don’t really need to be an expert on SEO to be very successful
[00:23:38] Why are you driving traffic to your site? You must have an understanding of why you want more people on your web page or landing on your online store
[00:30:21] Google wants to be the number one search place in the world. They want to deliver the right information that the people are searching for
[00:31:18] Google is refining their algorithm so that when you type something, you get exactly what you want. More accuracy means more people will use Google search
[00:31:45] Google AdWords is where the brands, companies, or websites will put money to be at the very top of Google search page
[00:32:45] If you accept cookies on a site, it allows them to track your other activity so that the advertisers on their site can market to you more. It shows your search habits on the internet
[00:34:53] Google is prioritizing the best content that is seen according to search intent. The better your content, the more valuable, and more legit it is, the more that Google is going to rank it higher
[00:37:00] What defines a really good content?
[00:38:30] Google’s algorithm is constantly changing because it wants to get better and better. It changes in terms of search ideas like voice function on Siri to search for things
[00:40:28] Commercial on Co-creation cohort.
[00:42:27] The first thing that we’re going to do is figure out what’s the search intent of our users
[00:44:10] If you're just getting started with your business, don’t even worry about SEO, worry about your ideal client first. Know your value proposition to your clients, to know the solution to their problems.
[00:51:18] Understanding who your ideal client matters, but what matters most is putting yourself in their shoes, having empathy for them, and thinking about their search intent on why they are typing in those set of keywords
[00:54:05] When you’re writing an SEO length article or a blog post that you want to be ranking first on Google, know first what keyword terms you want to be ranking for. Use headers to organize your content
[00:57:25] Google loves referencing to other sites. Inbound and outbound links from your webpage and other sites
[01:01:20] When you land on the front page of Google search results, you want to make sure that the title that you got is explicit and clear. Because if you do something quippy or vague that might probably not going to perform well. People always want a clear answer.
[01:03:11] You must use the keyword inside of the URL. You can change your URL before you hit publish on you blog post, web pages or website which is the last letter or words of the URL.
[01:06:20] You should focus on ranking for three to five keywords that really matter to you and that are going to be really good quality and deliver high quality to potential community members.
[01:07:30] SEO is a long game, getting traffic takes at least three months. It doesn’t require urgency
[01:11:20] What do you think the future of SEO will be like?
[01:18:37] We rely on the big three companies in order for our business to function. It’s important to understand how SEO works but it’s not going to make or break our business because as long as you have your own audience or community you have their emails to reach them and it will be okay
[01:21:25] As long as you are delivering value and you have a clear intention of who you want to help and how you want to help them, you’re going to get a community. You’re going to get listeners, viewers, and the right people.
[01:26:42] Michelle talks about Witch of the week, Bethany C. Meyers, an advocate of body neutrality
[01:41:45] Age of digital dysmorphia where there’s a lot of filters and alteration of the body and our digital perspectives of our bodies
[01:48:22] Outro of the Podcast