How to Supercharge SEO By Combining It With Branding
Transcript:
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Hey and welcome once again to the real Jeff Armstrong podcast where we talk about things that relate to freedom, building a lifestyle that is generating impact and where we seek to build businesses that are both sustainable and enjoyable. So today we're going to be talking about the topic of SEO in branding and why you can't separate those two. So, the big thing that sort of. I see people doing all the time it's like okay, I'm going to do my SEO so I'm going to do title tags and, you know, I'm gonna get all my copyright minute do my keywords and all these different things but you can't get very far into SEO before you get to things like well copywriting okay and copywriting is full of words that should resonate with your ideal client and guess what that starts getting into things like branding and so right off the bat, believe it or not when people start working on SEO in a lot of ways. Either they're working on branding actively or they're, they're doing things that should be working on branding but they're not actually thinking of it in the context of branding. Now, Google officials have come out and said that brand like building brand awareness and sort of centering SEO efforts around building your brand is pretty much the biggest, best way to affect your SEO efforts. So, if SEO guys and I mean we're talking like big guys in the SEO world like working for Google. We should probably listen right so we have to think in terms of okay branding and SEO are not different. But yet, they're not the same but they're highly highly related. So, like with a lot of my students that I in clients that I work on SEO with. I say, you know, we really have to think in terms of. Okay. What what are, how are we, how are we, how are we going to get people on your site, because the branding is what will keep people on your site and if they're not staying on your site, you're not going to be able to rank real well on Google. So the goal is. Okay, we need to get people to your site. Give them a sort of a welcome and create this experience so they feel like they want to stay on your site, and gain something from your site. And so that's why we can't separate the branding right because they're going to come to your site, more than likely you know maybe because it's the first, you know, thing that shows up for a particular particular keyword, but they also might come because they read your meta description okay and if you don't know what meta description is that's the description below your website, where it's at on a Google search page right so if you type in, you know wedding photographer in Tampa, or you know whatever. And let's say your website pops up the description below that that's the meta description, guess what that has in their words, and it should be, it should relate to your brand and use words that are going to attract people to your page. So the very first thing that people really see when it comes to whether or not they should click on your website is copy, and that copy, in order to attract them needs to resonate with your brand with your branding. Right, so if you're not real familiar with your brand or if you can't define your brand in terms of words in terms of your style, in terms of what ever it might be described in terms of relating to your ideal client, your ideal customers, then you're gonna have a hard time writing out the copy on your page. So, this is where it gets into like okay, well, can't I just hire. Can I just hire someone to do my SEO for me. And the problem is is that people unless someone is you, or you're willing to talk to someone else very deeply about your brand and have the ability to talk to someone very deeply about your brand. Then you're going to struggle with communicating clearly. Well, communicating clearly enough to those people that are doing your SEO, in order for them to actually properly do your SEO. So, a lot of big SEO companies want to focus on, you know just basic on page optimization, and then building backlinks which can be good and helpful, but that's not really the whole story. So, the difference is that if you do your SEO. Then, you're in luck I know if you you know you hear somebody say oh do your own SEO you know like oh SEO so hard and difficult the tough. It does not have to be, it really doesn't. A lot of us just knowing the right framework right so I have students that go through a framework that I call easy SEO accelerator fantastic program people get results, it's it's essentially what I did to get my site ranking in what has caused for us Google to be the biggest source of our income. And I guess shameless plug, highly recommend it. Right. But SEO doesn't have to be hard, but if you're if you know your branding and you can appropriately plug it in and create a good user experience on your website. Then you're going to be doing good, but big companies, we get into trouble because they aren't gonna have as good of an understanding of your ideal client, as you do. Okay. And so now you're going to have spent a lot of time communicating with them more than likely, if they're going to do a good job and help you be competitive SEO wise, and the reasons for this is that, you know, there's there's a few things that that you really have to do in order to continue rising on Google. And I'm going to explain just three terms real quick that are going to help us understand this one is an impression. Okay and impression is when someone sees your website on a particular Google search result for a keyword. You know, if they see you, but don't click it can affect where you rank on Google. Okay, so this is where things like your meta description members meta description which shows up under your site on Google. If your meta description doesn't catch their eye or, or if the name of your website or your brand or whatever doesn't resonate with them, and they don't click on you. It is not good for your SEO. Okay, if they do click, that's actually good for your SEO so that's a good thing. Now, if they click on your site, and then they click back off your site real quickly, that can actually hurt your SEO so that means that not only do we just want impressions where people are seeing you. We also want people to click through and then stay. Okay, so the next thing we're talking about the second term is CTR, which is click through right okay so click through is when someone sees your website on Google, and then clicks on it. Okay, so they can also click through to other pages and spend more and more time on your site which sends good signals to Google, and is good for your SEO. Okay. The third term. We're going to talk about is bounce rate. Okay, a bounce rate is when someone clicks through to your site. But then they don't really visit any other pages. And, you know, they just jump off. So, this isn't necessarily bad if it's indicating to Google that you know the users. Maybe they found what they need. Okay and then their problem is solved. But, if they're not really taking any action your pages not getting that conversion of some sort. And they're, they're bouncing it can be a negative sign for your SEO. So all these things combined effect your or effect what I call the average time spent by visitor on your site. So, the higher the average time spent the better it is for your SEO and not just your SEO, but also the chances that that person that visitor is going to turn into some sort of customer right. So, we want people to stay on your website as long as possible. So, your branding, your copy which includes your branding in it right, your call to actions that you have on your website as thetic, and even I mean just anything about your website who you are. If you have pictures of you on your website. All this affects the average time spent by each person that's visiting your site. And guess what, SEO companies can't really do those things in terms of influencing your branding this thetic calls to actions. They can't extensively do those things to resonate with your ideal clients, without extensive involvement by you. So, if you don't have a real extensive understanding of SEO and your SEO doesn't have extensive understanding of you and your clients, there can be a really big gap. And so people sometimes will pay lots of money to SEO companies and not be very happy with the results. And you can do that. And you can spend money and have someone do it for you. And actually end up spending more time maybe then if you did it yourself, if you had a solid framework to do it. So what that means is that you can end up spending more money and spend maybe more time hiring someone else to do it than if you were to do it yourself, and make it more effective. So, you know, again, SEO companies they're gonna do, maybe some keyword research, they might optimize your homepage a bit. They might get some links on other websites which can kind of be helpful or they might, you know, some SEO company has been known to be pretty bad about just getting shady links on shady websites which can actually hurt your SEO, over time, or at least not help it really. So, the, the moral of the story is that the large SEO companies can't affect your branding. Like you can. Okay. And this is also why again why you can't separate SEO from branding. Now, you on the other hand, you understand your ideal client, you understand your branding. Okay, so really the big thing for you is being able to understand how to do keyword research, understanding how to plug those keywords into your website. And then, understanding how to create a user experience to where people are are sort of led through your website. Oh and I use the analogy of a lazy river. Okay, so if you think if, If you've not done a lazy river explain it. Since, essentially where you would lay in like a tube of some sort, like an inner tube and just sort of float down this, you know, concrete pathway, where the water's flowing. That's what we want to create for our ideal clients, and whoever else might be coming to our website we want to guide, these different types of people to various destinations, okay we want them to stay on our website. And because we can learn about those people understand those people and even learn to see how they're interacting with our website. We can create an experience that keeps people on our page and sends good signals to Google. So that Google says oh wow this. This website is a really good website to be ranking. And so that way you keep ranking, and you keep getting seen. Now, you know, one of the ways that I talked about creating that lazy river is by having a website that is very clear on what the next step is you know so you always want to have very clear steps as to. Okay. The user finds you know your homepage, and then they know, really, the next thing to look at. And then the next thing. And then the next thing, and then the next thing. Okay, so there's a lot of clarity that comes whenever you have this sort of idea of okay for this type of person lands on my website, let's say it's your ideal client. I want them to see the main picture on my website, and then they're called to scroll down a little bit. And then they see okay to hear about me. And then the okay there's a call to action to learn more. And then so on and so forth. So, each step along the way they're being guided to take action. Okay. That way they feel like they're being nurtured. Right. And a lot of these things are. I mean I've, I've looked at people's websites and been like, Hey, we need to change this because you know this is going to create confusion. You know, and it could be designed things, you know sometimes I've, I've like go to people's websites and I'm like why does this part make me feel bad. And then we start kind of looking at it a little bit more and it could even be just something as far as you know like borders being disproportion disproportional. And then that being even okay around things like pictures, and you'd be surprised how that that does actually happened right. It can be as simple as things like even having some broken links. I have one student in particular that has a short website that has a lot has had a lot of problems with broken links. And believe it or not it's poor, it's very likely that it has caused her people. It has caused her not being reached out to by people that probably would have reached out if they would have had a really good experience on her website. Now, that does affect booking and things but it also affects the SEO side of things. So you know we've been able to go in and say okay hey, you know, got all these different broken links really need to get these things fixed. Right, so you can't separate the branding and the user experience and you certainly can't separate those from SEO, your branding, your SEO, your copywriting your user experience, all these things really ultimately affect your brand. That's why brand is so important when it comes to search engines. It's why it's so important even for your booking, you know, very often I see people trying to compete on things like, you know, with wedding photographers, very often it's wedding photographers want to compete on how pretty their images are, you know, so very often wedding photographers, want to be with. I don't think they want to, but what I find is that they make the only sort of differentiating differentiating thing about their website. The photos, and I'm like you don't just want this to be a comparison between the different photos in our day and age when you can go to a photography workshop and get a portfolio. That looks like, you know, a very expensive wedding. You know someone that's not shot any weddings can have a very very good portfolio so to compete on the basis of images is very very tough so yeah it's, it is good to have good pictures. But the people that are going to win out in the long run when it comes to photography in a market, and this this holds true for, I would say just about any industry. It's going to be those people that know how to create a strong brand that communicates very clearly, and creates confidence among their ideal clients. Those are going to be the brands that really stand strong. It can't be weak. If we compete on the basis of how you know being prettier than the next person or being cheaper than the next person or being like, I don't know, I mean at this point that like those are almost the, the main things that I see people doing is in the budget world it's like well I'm cheaper than so and so, right in the, like, more high end market. It's like my photos are more pretty than so and so. Okay. And again, even if if we wouldn't say this. Sometimes it's very very implied by the websites that I look at that. Okay, we're competing almost immediately on how pretty the photos are versus the actual branding. That will make the client or the potential client. Feel resonated with, and then actually reach out, based on that specific sort of impact that you had on them based on your branding. Okay, pictures are an aspect of that, and you can cultivate a specific style and we need more and more of that. You know I think photographers are beginning to realize that, you know, your average couple is not like super interested in having the most editorial editorial photos all the time. Okay, there is an aspect of that and some people like that more than others and it does vary, I would say, by region where they're at, stuff like that. But there's something to be said for creating unique photos that are very you, that also resonate with your ideal clients. Okay, in, in that can take different forms in different markets. But what we're seeing a lot in the photography world is, well, oh I really like these type of photos, and then you create these type of photos that are just like someone else's photos, and now everyone is mimicking that specific style. Okay, so that's why it's very very important not to compete on the level of photos. So if you've been competing on really in any way whatsoever on the basis of photos that doesn't mean, again, that you shouldn't have as good of photos like have photos, make them uniquely you make them uniquely resonant make them, you very, I want to say the word resume. I think that's word can I use that your photos should be resonating with your ideal client. That's going to help you stand out, you can't stand out with having photos that are very much unique okay so don't hear me say that okay it doesn't matter what your photos look like, That's not true. It's just that the biggest difference among a sea of photographers that all are beginning to look very very very much the same. The difference is going to come in how you approach branding, how you approach the client experience from the very get go. And so, SEO. Again, while we're talking about how you can't separate SEO from branding SEO is going to help you to be able to establish that connection with people. Right after they type that you know whatever they're searching for into the Google search bar. Okay, so they can begin to resonate with you right away so I do recommend you know if you have not yet written out. Okay. These are the five words that describe my brand. I would write them out. And they should resonate with who you are and who your ideal clients are okay because we're going to be using those type of words in your copy. We need to be able to sort of weave the essence of everything that your brand is into your copy and then yes we do want to find good keywords and, and we're not going to dive, all into keywords right now but, you know, being able to get into the mind of your client, understand okay what keywords might they be searching for and then doing the keyword keyword research based on that client focus the potential client focus the ideal, or dream client focus is how we should be approaching SEO if we actually want it to equal dollar bill so again, SEO branding can't be separated. And that's especially so if you actually want SEO to make you money that's the goal right is that SEO would would increase our income and allow us to make more impact and that impact is going to come through the branding. Okay. So I hope this has been very, very helpful. As always, it's a pleasure and a privilege for me to be able to chat with you on here so please feel free to reach out if you have any other talking points or questions. And, you know, good place to go to is my website at the real Jeff Armstrong Comm. You can go to the contact page, contact me there you can also contact me at contact at the real Jeff Armstrong Comm. You can also find me on Instagram, and, you know, I guess even Twitter if anybody's using Twitter nowadays, please do leave a review and subscribe. And as always look forward to be able to spend time with you next time here on the real, Jeff, Armstrong podcast, you have a wonderful rest of the day. and I look forward to next time.
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