What is SEO? SEO 101: Everything to Know for Personal Brands
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Welcome to the Blogging and SEO Show. I'm Makayla, a stay-at-home mom of three who just happens to be in love with everything related to SEO, blogging, marketing, coffee, and shedding light into the many mystifying corners of search engine optimization. And what that means for us service providers, small business owners, and even bloggers is

We're ditching the do-it-all narrative surrounding SEO and blogging and just sitting down and crafting strategies that are sustainable but still get us those first page long-lasting results. Now let's get cozy, grab your fave sweater and a cup of tea or coffee, and let's talk everything blogging and SEO.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Blogging and SEO Show. I think that I have just come to the conclusion that I make long episodes, and maybe not the longest episodes, but just long enough to where I can't say, oh, this episode's not going to take you too long, because that would be just a boldface lie. I have a few interviews coming out here soon, and you'll understand why I say that. I start every interview with saying that

you know, this is only going to take us 20, 30 minutes. And then, or well, every episode is 20, around 20 minutes. And, you know, interviews tend to go a little bit longer. So I'm like 20, 30 minutes, you know? No, we yapped. We definitely yapped, but it's all good information. So I'm very excited for those episodes to come out. But until then, I wanted to kind of take it back to the beginning. I feel like I never did a really good episode

where we just kind of dove into SEO. I've covered some of the different aspects of SEO. We briefly touched on content SEO and off-page SEO, but we never really talked about what SEO is and why we should give a fudge. So that's what we're going to do today. We're taking it all the way back. We're just, you know, with the show's

name refresh, I felt like we needed to start off on a good foot. And so SEO stands for search engine optimization, and optimization means to refine, make better, make best. So essentially, you are prepping your website to be found by search engines like Google,

Google, Bing, ChatGPT at this point, anything that serves as a search engine. When you're talking about SEO and you're working with an SEO, many SEOs are going to focus on Google because it is the main search engine out there at the moment. I say at the moment because, I mean, it could change. People are loving this ChatGPT feature of finding stuff. And, you know, most search engines are working on a same basis. They're using keywords to find things.

your content and ranking it by how people are engaging with it. And by engaging with it, I mean, how are they behaving when they get on your website or when they see your webpage or piece of content, blog post, whatever show up in their search results after they've searched whatever they want to search. Are they clicking it? Are they spending time reading it?

Are they clicking out of it? Are they saying like, no, this doesn't, I don't want this. I'm getting to your website and like, this isn't for me, I'm out. Are they getting on your webpage and then looking through to another webpage, whether that's your offer page, your services, contact, or even another blog post or heading to download something? Are they taking another step? Or once they read what you have, are they leaving? So all of this goes into...

where Google puts you in search and where search engines put you in their rankings and when someone searches their keyword. And any keyword or search query

as we're going to put it, any keyword or search query is whatever somebody is typing into the Google search bar or search bar on the platform, on whatever search engine that you're using. And I feel like it's super cool information. Like everybody wants to be number one on Google because you know that they are getting the absolute most traffic for the query. So if you're kind of not quite there on what I'm saying, just take a moment and

whether you're on your phone or your computer, but if you're driving, like, don't do it. Just chill for a minute. But go to Google, search whatever you're an expert in.

or whatever your service is. So if you're a podcast manager, search podcast management. Or if you want to get even more detailed, say podcast manager for whoever you serve. So service providers or coaches. And search that up and see who shows up. It may be very different than who you know in the space because different people focus on different platforms of marketing. But if you have not focused on SEO,

At all, it's very unlikely that you'll show up there for whatever you're trying to rank for, whoever you're serving, whatever you're offering. So your podcast manager, your service, plus whoever you're serving that you just typed in, that is your search query. And that is what people look for when they're ready to hire you.

and I say ready to hire you, like they are looking for that specific person to work with them. Because, you know, we do have people in different parts of their journey that come to Google that use SEO to find, to build connections, because not everybody is like, okay, I'm ready to buy today. They may be asking, what is a podcast manager? When is it time to hire a podcast manager? Or not even like in the point of they're considering a podcast manager, but they've

got this idea they want to start a podcast. And so instead, they're thinking, okay, how do I edit a podcast episode? How am I going to edit my podcast? Or do I need an intro, an outro? Or how do I monetize my podcast? Like,

Are people going to buy my services or book my services? Or do I need to focus on trying to get advertisements? But I'm a business owner. Do I need advertisements? So all these questions are things that people are asking Google that are they're looking on search engines.

And they're asking these questions. And although they may not be able to or have even considered hiring or even know what a podcast manager is, they are looking for answers that you can provide. And that's kind of where blogging steps in and helps with SEO. And we're going to I guess we'll just go ahead and get into that, too. But that's kind of where blogging steps in, because instead of a five page website or eight page or however many pages that you have, a three page where it's just got your home page, your services and then a contact page.

blogging gives you multiple pages and allows you to target these questions that people are asking to build a little bit more awareness and meet people in the middle or the beginning or wherever they are in their journey versus that I'm ready to buy. Because, you know, there's a lot of awareness and education that goes in to connecting with someone and building trust before they're ready to buy. Although you can absolutely just rank for those main keywords around your website and have people who are ready to buy. But

There is that nurturing journey that goes in before that. That's where blogging very much comes in and why I love it so much and really why you should love it so much too. So I feel like this really takes us into the aspects of SEO. And we've kind of talked about this already in this journey of understanding what SEO is. So there are four aspects of SEO and it can also vary because when you get into e-commerce, you also have to consider about how your product listings change.

are optimized for SEO. So maybe there's even six. There's a lot of aspects of SEO, honestly. Okay, but for now, we're going to focus on four. If you are a service provider, these are probably going to be the main four that you're looking at, especially if you work and you're not serving people locally, because if you're, well, you're not specifically serving people locally. You're not limited to people locally, because if you're a photographer, this could look a little bit different. You're also going to want to focus on local SEO because there are only certain spaces that

or areas or locations that you want to shoot. So that's where local SEO comes in. But the other aspects of SEO that pretty much everybody can focus on is on-page, technical, off-page, and content. So starting with on-page,

On page is pretty much refining your website so that your website ranks higher on Google. And it's not, we're not doing your blog. It's not design or anything. It's, okay, is there any tweaks in your main page copy that we can add a keyword or tweak this one word? It's optimizing your images, adding all image descriptions and making sure that they make sense for your webpage and that they do have...

relevance to everything else. Everything else there, like they're not just maybe a picture of your kitchen and you're trying to promote your services for blogging. Like doesn't quite make sense unless it's you in your kitchen and that's your brand. But then we also have to tell Google why that makes sense there. But when it comes to technical SEO, you're thinking more of your website structure, your website speed,

How long does it take your website to load? Is your website safe for people to visit? You know, is it easy to navigate? Do you have the navigation in the top and in the bottom? Is it mobile friendly? Can people view it on their phones and not just on desktop? All of that goes into technical SEO.

Whereas on-page is, I would say, not surface level, but more surface level than technical. Next is your off-page SEO. And so off-page SEO can get kind of confusing. And mainly it's because to improve off-page SEO, it really, this is where collaboration comes in. You can do some naturally as you blog and you work on your SEO that way. And you really create valuable content.

searchable content, people are going to naturally backlink to you. Other resources are going to come and backlink to your website and that's going to build your off-page SEO. Off-page SEO is essentially how other websites interact with your website. That's why it's so hard to kind of build a strategy around because it very much relies on other people. Although there is some action that you can take

But pretty much what happens is Google looks at how other websites look at your website, essentially. And the more websites that trust...

your website that are trustworthy themselves shows Google that, hey, like we trust them. You should too. You know, we trust them to be an expert. They're saying some good things over here. You should absolutely trust them as well. Whereas if it's a not so trustworthy website and they're like, you know, we're a little sketchy over here, but we like this person and we're going to link to them. I can kind of give you a little bit of bad rep with Google and Google's like,

If they're calling this a trustworthy website, should we really trust them? But a good backlink, which is what that's called, a good backlink goes so much further than a bad backlink does harm you. And of course, it's like kind of on a case by case basis, but yeah.

I would say that that's a summary of off-page SEO. And if you found that confusing, I do actually have an episode purely dedicated to off-page SEO that's going to be in the show notes that you can listen to. It was one of the first episodes that I published going on some of the basics of SEO. And I am trying my hardest to go as an overview for these, but

They are... I don't want to call SEO complicated because SEO is truly... It sounds complicated, but it's not. I don't know how else to say that. It's just time-consuming to learn. It is time-consuming to learn and to...

learn to apply because it's very much, okay, I need to take these concepts in and then I have to figure out how to apply them to me specifically because not every SEO strategy is going to be able to fit your business or you may have to take into consideration different SEO types or

aspects of SEO that somebody else doesn't. And so you're going to have to research more in this area versus this area or spend more time here versus there. And then you have to consider, okay, well, where can I spend my time and then my budget? What can I truly commit to this? Because consistency really does help so much. And that's where it kind of gets difficult. That's where it gets tricky to balance.

And then you're also like, well, my website maybe isn't in the perfect shape. Is it optimized? I feel like I'm not ranking. How do I even know if I'm ranking? So all these things just start piling on and piling on and it can feel very overwhelming. But it truly is. Once you can nail down the basic concepts, it feels so much easier to

to figure out where to start and if you can do it by yourself. Obviously, I do SEO and I help business owners like you handle SEO. But I also want you to know that, you know, this is possible to get started by yourself. If you do not have the funds, if you do not have

the ability to invest in someone professional right now. You can do some SEO work on your own. You can do some keyword research. You can put titles on your pages. And whereas, you know, you may not have the time to do all of it, you can get started. And I do have a checklist down in the show notes below if you want to download that and get started. It has six simple steps to get started with your SEO, and it's going to take you through some of the basic steps

things that you can take 10 or 15 minutes to get started and start seeing a difference in how Google looks at your website and other search engines look at your website. So that is linked down below in the show notes if you would like to download that for free. Anyways, on to content. So content SEO is just a fancy word for blogging, but it's more all-encompassing. So for example, if your case studies are...

On your website, there's that's content. If you have reviews, that's content. If you have portfolio pieces and you're a photographer or...

a venue or sharing like a bride, a wedding, like that's content. So all of this goes into content SEO. And I loop it into blogging because honestly, the only reason most people don't loop it into blogging is because they're thinking traditional blogging, which is more of like the lifestyle thing, sharing your thoughts, dropping your ideas. Whereas blogging now is more of like

You can still do that, but it can also be a photographer adding a few blurbs or paragraphs around a photo shoot they just did or a service provider summarizing the journey their client took or answering questions, doing how-tos, sharing the whys, doing roundups, doing a review. All of these things are content. Turning your podcast into a blog post, that's a favorite of mine. It's all...

content SEO. So content SEO is essentially what gives you more opportunities to show up on Google and for people to find you at those multiple points in their journey. We kind of touched on this a few minutes ago in the same episode. Sorry for repeating myself, but it really, it really does help. Like I said, we start off with this base website. We've got three to eight pages to do whatever we need to do with SEO. Content SEO essentially steps in and says, okay, I'm going to take your few

few pages, your handful of pages, and I'm going to turn it into 50 pages or I'm going to turn it into 100 pages or a thousand pages or websites out there with thousands and thousands of blog posts that rank for thousands and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of keywords and just continually show up. I mean, just think of Forbes or Buzzsprout or any of these big old websites that you're like,

why are they even in the search? Is this what they do? Like, the last thing I expected to search this keyword is to find a Buzzsprout article giving me the answer. But they do. And it's because they spent so much time on Google building this trust.

that now they can just write whatever they want to write and show up in it. But they are ranking for hundreds of thousands of keywords and they have hundreds. I would bet they have hundreds of thousands of blog posts, if not at least a hundred thousand. They've got to have so many, specifically Buzzsprout. I don't know about Forbes, but Buzzsprout has to have a shit ton of content on their website. But anyway, so

We take that to ourselves and every blog post that you write and you publish and you optimize and refine has another chance of ranking. It has another chance of you showing up in front of who is looking for you or looking for something that you do or somewhere in your industry batch of knowledge, your world of knowledge.

you have another chance for showing up. Let's drop the podcast example and let's talk about an Instagram strategist. So let's say you're an Instagram strategist. There are different things that we're going to have to think about. There's going to be people who are just getting started on Instagram and then there's people who are kind of like trying to grow and there's people who have established accounts. So we're thinking about where they are in their journey, the questions that they have, or because

concerns that they have even, not even just the questions. It could be, you know, how to prevent this from happening or what to look for in a next update. Has the algorithm changed? How do I create a strategy when I have so many followers? How do I utilize how many followers I have? How do I boost my engagement? Help my engagement is dropping. What is a strategy? Do I need a strategy? Can I take a break from Instagram? And then there's even like different, different

And then there's even different approaches you can create to build trust. So maybe your 10 top Instagram tools or three books to read if you want to know more about your branding so that you can put your brand into your Instagram strategy or be a more personable brand on Instagram. So there's all these different approaches that you can take to connect with people in different points of their journey and what they're looking for and who they are because you

I'm just assuming this Instagram strategist who is native in my head wants to work with all three of them in different capacities. They have different offers and they want to work with each one and each offer so that in the long term, the person that they are reaching at the beginning of their journey wants to also work with them at the end of their journey.

But they're not ditching the people at the end of the journey who may be a little bit harder to book, but have a higher investment, I guess to say, a higher long-term investment and want to work with them now too. So blogging gives you this opportunity to reach these people in their different portions.

And different offers that you have. And it lasts an awful long time. So, you know, the average blog post ranks for two years. And it can rank for up to ten years, depending on what you're writing about or anything like that. And that's not even a hard cap off. That's just...

What I've seen, like there are blog posts that have been chilling around that are ranking Google search and have been there for freaking forever because either there's no competition or they've just been that valuable an offer. And they've been, you know, slowly updating that post, fixing anything that's out of date. And it just keeps chilling and doing the work for them.

So that kind of brings me to the tracking aspect because you're like, well, how do I see if all this is actually making a difference? And Google has this cute little thing called Google Search Console, which you can sign your website up. It's for free. And you add the tracking code and then you get to track your results. You get to see what keywords you're in for. You get to see the impressions that you have, which is how many people see you in search versus the actual click throughs that you have, which is how many people click.

your link in search where they've seen you, but you can also look at your Google Analytics or Bing has a similar thing where you can look it up. There's just different backend aspects. And if you're a search writer, I always recommend adding UTMs where you can, if it makes sense to you and adding Google or Blog.

or actually both. If you're blogging, I say put blog. And if you're not blogging, I say just put Google. If you are blogging, I say put blog and Google. But if you're not blogging, obviously just put Google. That way people can see, oh, I found you from your blog or I found you from Google. Just so you can see more of the direct payoff because not everybody who finds you through your blog is going to find you through Google because your blog can be put so many other places. Like you can use it in your email, you can put it on Instagram, like linking it in your stories, you can put it on Pinterest. And

There's just so many different things you can do there. But you always want to make sure that you are seeing the results of your work. That way you can see, okay, this...

style of post is doing really well, let me go ahead and focus my energy there. Or, you know, this one's not doing really well, let me focus my energy there. But you can also see, okay, this one's not getting a lot of traffic, but it's getting a lot of conversions. I'm having a lot of people click through even if it's only 10 people a month versus this one. Okay, it's getting a lot of traffic, but nobody's really converting. Maybe I need to narrow this down a little bit because, you know, we're not bloggers. We are business owners. So whereas bloggers can monetize

purely off of traffic, purely from people just visiting their website with placement ads.

we really need someone to click our website, click our offer, buy it, book it, download it, whatever it is. That way we can continue to make a living to sustain our lives. And I mean, there's no shame in that. We have the goal of our business is to support our family, help us live the life we want to live. Or if we have a cause or anything that we want to support, we also have the ability to do that. It's to help provide some sense of financial freedom. And

When we write our blog post, when we pick our keywords, that's what we also have to consider is that, you know, we need to make the most out of the opportunity that we have with the content that we're creating, with the keywords that we're choosing. All that just goes into the strategy that you create and the strategy you utilize. But I'm going to call that it for today because I feel like we've gone over a lot of things and I feel like I have just knowledge dumped onto your brain, which I

If you have any questions about SEO, please feel free to just shoot me a DM on Instagram at comma mama.co. As always, I am also linked in the show notes, but I am always there. Beware. I do like voice notes, so you may get like 17 voice notes from me because Instagram cannot handle me. I am definitely the nine minute voice note queen, but if you have a question, please reach out. I'm

always here to help share that information, especially when it's about the foundations of SEO and just building those initial concepts because it can get quite overwhelming and tricky. But I am here for you. That is literally all I do. But before you leave, if you don't want to deal with the guesswork and you know that SEO is something that is important to you, that you want to make sure that you are showing up in search and that these people are finding you, I

And you want to give your website the best opportunity to show up in search when people are searching for the keywords that people are currently looking for.

book your SEO audit and optimization. There is a link in the show notes and let's get started. Let's refine your website. Let's optimize for your keywords and let's build your foundation of SEO to get you started. As always, I hope you found this episode so, so helpful and I will talk to you again next time.

As always, I hope you were able to learn at least one new thing today and how you can apply it to your own business or blog. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Blogging and SEO Show. Don't forget to hit follow so you don't miss the next episode. I promise it's a goodie. And check the show notes for everything we talked about today. And come connect with me on Instagram at Kamamama.co.

If you have any questions or thoughts you want to share, DM me. Let's chat. Until next time, talk soon.