April 8, 2025 • 22 mins
Have you ever wondered if you can really do SEO on your own? Maybe you've tried before and run into issues or gotten stuck? That's super common. I believe you definitely can learn how to do SEO on your own, but it's much smarter to take a course from someone like me, who has lots of experience in SEO and can save you time, answer your questions, and help you get results faster than if you try to Google and YouTube your way through the whole thing.
Register now for the free live SEO class the week of April 28 - Learn what the 3 most common SEO mistakes are that keep you from getting traffic from Google so you can make sure you're not making them.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/registration-live-seo-class
My free resources, including the Beginner's step-by-step SEO Guide and my free class, are available here.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/freebies
Join me in Simple SEO Content, my complete SEO and Content Marketing course that teaches you what to do step-by-step. It walks you through the entire process. (complete course)
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/yes
Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast? Ask it here -
https://forms.gle/Fbrqpmss6gxUnaMj7
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shure MV7 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome back to the Simple SEO Podcast.
I'm so glad that you're herewith me today.
I want to answer a question thatI get all the time, and I'll bet
you have wondered this, thoughtit, wanted to ask it yourself at
some point, too.
And that is, Can I really do SEOon my own?
(00:20):
Like, can I really learn thisand understand it and get it to
work?
Because it seems hard or timeconsuming or really super techy
and I'm just not sure.
So I want to assure you, firstand foremost, yes you can.
If you have someone to guide youand show you how to do it and
(00:41):
explain it and answer yourquestions as they come up.
If you're determined to Googleand YouTube your way through it,
you may truly find it to befrustrating and stressful.
And you may truly struggle to,Get it to work for you.
And I don't say that because Iteach an SEO class.
(01:04):
I say that because I've been inSEO for 15 years, and I know
there is a ton of misinformationout there.
There is so much badinformation.
And it's really hard to knowwhat's good and what's bad.
And I know there's a lot of itbecause I have my students ask
me all the time, Hey, I heard Xin a group.
(01:27):
Hey, my business coach told mewhy I heard this.
And nine times out of 10, whatthey're being told by the other
people in their lives isincorrect.
And many times what they'rebeing told actually is going to
hurt their chances to rank.
And they're left wondering,well, what am I supposed to do?
(01:49):
So that's when they come andthey ask me and they say,
Rachel, what am I supposed todo?
I don't want to make a mistake.
I've worked so hard on my SEO.
My website is doing well.
It's ranking.
I'm getting traffic.
But now my business coach issaying this, and I just want to,
I try so hard not to say.
And how much experience doesyour business coach have in SEO?
(02:12):
Like, there are a lot of thingsI could give you advice on that
I probably don't truly haveenough experience with.
And unfortunately, SEO is one ofthose things.
Like, there are a lot of peopleout there who really don't have
a lot of experience with it whoare telling you how to do it and
what to do.
And so much of it is wrong.
Like, okay, my friend, I'm goingto go on a Slight little tangent
(02:34):
real quick.
Keyword density.
Have you heard people tell youthere is a perfect keyword
density?
You need to have a keyworddensity score.
You need to have 2 percentkeyword density, 3%, 5%,
whatever.
Most people who are teaching SEOare saying you need to have a
specific keyword density score.
However, that's just for her.
(02:54):
Google has outright said, no,you don't.
We don't have a perfect keyworddensity score.
We don't want you to write for aspecific keyword density.
We want you to write for yourideal customer and you will
naturally use your keyword inwhat you're writing and what
you're doing because the contentthat you're creating is about
(03:17):
the keyword.
And that came straight fromDanny Sullivan, who is the head
of Search at Google, who waspreviously my editor at Search
Engine Land.
Danny's been in SEO forever.
Prior to Danny, Matt Cutts wasour Google go to.
Basically, if Matt Cutts So ifyou're reading an article and
(03:44):
you see something and it saysit's from Danny Sullivan or he's
been quoted, there's probably areally good chance you can count
on whatever Danny said.
If you see something and it'sfrom Matt Cutts, Matt hasn't
been with Google in gosh,probably seven or eight years,
maybe longer than that.
So you might want to doublecheck that it's current, but.
in the past, anything Matt saidwas good too.
(04:05):
Anyway, there's my littletangent about keyword density
scores because I'm tired ofhearing about it.
I got an email in my inbox thismorning about this new tool that
can help you verify your keyworddensity and I'm like, oh my
gosh, you don't understand therules as far as Google is
concerned.
This is part of why learning SEOon your own is So hard because
you don't know, you're justlearning.
(04:27):
You don't know what you shouldor should not be doing.
You don't know who to trust orwho to listen to you.
And so it's hard and it'sfrustrating.
That's why I always say.
The best thing, if it's in thebudget, if you can make it work,
is join me in simple SEOcontent.
I cut through all the extra, allthe fluff, all the junk that you
really don't need, and I justteach you what you need to know
(04:52):
to be able to succeed and beable to drive results.
And driving results, in my mind,is we're getting traffic to your
website, we're showing up higheron Google, And those people who
are coming to your website arethe right people because they're
getting on your email list,they're buying your products,
they're booking your services,all of that.
(05:12):
We don't want to send a bunch oftraffic to our website that is
irrelevant to our business.
That does us no good.
I actually had that situationand It kind of killed me because
I took off a blog post aboutalmost a year ago.
It was a great post, and itranked so high.
It ranked in position number oneon Google.
(05:33):
It got a lot of traffic everysingle month.
But my business had evolved andchanged over the 7 or 8 years
since I wrote that post.
And it was no longer relevant.
The people who came and found mefrom that post, we're not going
to engage with my currentbusiness because it was a post
(05:55):
on how to nail your firstFacebook Live.
Well, I don't teach anythingabout doing Facebook Live
anymore.
I don't have resources for them.
I used to have a Facebook Liveguide to help you, like, feel
comfortable and be ready andwhat you should do and what you
should talk about.
So I had a lot of people comingto my website from that
(06:15):
particular post because theywere finding it on Google.
But it was no longer applicableto my business.
And so I made a really harddecision and I removed the post
from my blog.
And so I lost a lot of trafficbecause of that, because that
post ranked number one, it got alot of traffic, but the traffic
that I got.
After I removed that was bettertraffic.
(06:38):
They were more likely to engage.
They were more likely to sign upfor an email opt in.
They were more likely to getsomething because it was more
relevant to them.
That Facebook live guide, thataudience wasn't going to convert
for SEO, content marketing,podcasting.
(06:58):
Maybe they would go forpodcasting, but I don't know.
So that's what I want you tothink about.
What do you have?
Who are you bringing to yourwebsite?
What are we trying to do withthe website when you're doing it
on your own?
You want to be very strategic.
And that's part of what we talkabout in Simple SEO content is
being very strategic in ourapproach.
I had another student who joinedme.
(07:20):
She had a pretty goodunderstanding of SEO before she
joined the course.
She's been in about a year.
She was getting some traffic.
She originally asked me becauseit felt like her traffic was
down and something was goingwrong.
And so we looked at it and it'slike, well, you're ranking for
these things, but do these applyto your business?
And she said, no, not really.
I'm like, okay, then why are wetargeting these keywords?
(07:42):
We need to switch it around andwe need to target keywords that
are gonna bring the right peopleto your business.
So she worked on that and shesaid she found like at first,
she, it kind of felt like shewas throwing spaghetti against
the wall, trying to figure outwhat she could rank for, where
she could get traffic.
But now after taking the courseand being there and asking
questions, and she's a starstudent, like she does
(08:02):
everything she's supposed to do,she's found that she's able to
be incredibly strategic and sheknows before she starts writing
her posts that she has a reallygood chance of ranking for this
one.
because of the fact sheunderstands how keyword rankings
happen, how Google determineswho's going to rank.
So she can look at it and shecan pick a keyword and say,
(08:23):
okay, I have a really goodchance of ranking for this
keyword, which is amazing.
And that's one of the benefitsof taking a class and learning
how to do this.
I've had blog posts that I'vewritten that have ranked on page
one of Google within like aweek.
If you know what you're doingand you're able to create
content and Google understandsyour site and they know you and
(08:44):
they trust you, you can rankreally fast and you can start
getting traffic quickly to yournew content.
But if you've got mistakes onyour site and you don't even
know it, You're going tostruggle.
And that's where I end up withpeople saying, I tried SEO
before and it didn't work oreven worse, I don't know if it
worked because I don'tunderstand the numbers in
(09:06):
analytics.
Have you ever thought that?
Like, I don't even understandwhat the numbers mean in
analytics.
I log in there and I, all I seeis a whole bunch of numbers and
it's kind of overwhelming.
And so I just close it out andgo, hope it's good.
I teach you what those numbersmean, and more importantly,
which ones matter and which onesdon't, so that you can look at
(09:26):
it and be strategic.
Hey, this type, this type blogpost works really well for my
audience.
This type over here does not.
Oh, look, this one is rankingreally well and is driving a ton
of traffic, Rachel's Facebooklive guide.
And it's the wrong traffic.
I don't even offer somethinglike that anymore.
This is not gonna help me.
(09:46):
So that's why I think it'sreally important to learn SEO
from somebody like me, hopefullyme, who has been in the business
for a long time, who's seeneverything.
I have seen everything.
I have tried to, I have workedon clients in every niche, every
(10:07):
niche, I'm pretty sure, over theyears.
SEO will work for you.
There's no niche that's toocompetitive.
There's no niche that you can'tdo this in.
I am in probably, realistically,the single most competitive
niche from an SEO standpoint.
I am targeting SEO.
There is no harder niche thanthe one I'm in and yet I can
(10:32):
find opportunities to rank onpage one.
I will probably never rank forwhat is SEO or how do you do SEO
because the SEO tools create aton of content.
All the tool companies have beenblogging for years and they have
tons of content and they'remachines, they're content
(10:52):
powerhouses and they rank andthat's okay.
Because you know what?
The person searching what is SEOprobably isn't the one that is
going to come in and take aclass with me.
The person who's searching SEOfor solopreneurs or what are the
numbers mean in GoogleAnalytics?
Or is my SEO working?
(11:13):
That's more my person and thoseare more the type Queries that I
go after.
And that's what I want you tounderstand.
Like when you take a class andyou learn and you understand,
you can be very strategic andyou can have your content where
people are looking.
The other thing that I'm seeingis we have a lot of changes.
I'm going to talk about this inthe next couple of podcast
episodes.
(11:33):
We have a lot of changes withAI, and I'm getting a lot of
questions about AI and AI searchat the core of it.
is having your website properlyoptimized.
Following SEO best practiceswill help you have a better
chance of being one of thewebsites that shows up in chat
GPT or perplexity or the AIoverviews and you can get
(11:56):
traffic to your website from allof those places.
We're really talking about brandvisibility among different
search engines in differentareas.
I have an entire bonus that Iadded just recently.
On how to optimize and formatyour content for AI search
engines and chatbots and all ofthat because this is brand new,
(12:19):
it's evolving, and I wanted tobe able to teach you how to do
that as well.
So what I want you to remember,you can do this on your own.
You can learn, but the best wayto do it is to take a class.
Let me help you.
Let me guide you through this.
If you're ready to get started,what I want you to do is get the
(12:40):
free, um, Beginner's Guide toSEO.
It kind of walks you through,step by step, what it is, how it
works.
It'll get you started.
And then take the SEO 101 class.
That's going to help you kind ofunderstand how, a little more
about it.
And then also how you getstarted.
And you can make the choice, youknow, do you want to hire
someone or do you want to do ityourself?
(13:00):
And I know.
I know, I know, I know.
Most people don't want to putthe time into it.
They say, I'm too busy.
I'm already working on anotherclass.
I've already got something elsegoing on.
I need to focus on this.
I just want to pay someone to doit.
And I get it.
Because there are times where Ijust want to pay someone to do
it too.
I don't want to be the one tocreate the social media graphic.
(13:21):
Or I don't want to be the one tocreate, you know, whatever it
is.
And I'd rather just pay someone.
But the bottom line is whenyou're hiring someone to do SEO,
a good SEO strategist isexpensive.
A crummy SEO strategist is quitecheap.
You don't want a crummy one.
In SEO you really truly do getwhat you pay for.
(13:41):
I do work one on one with peoplebut it's like 5, 000 for me to
optimize your website for youversus 1, 000 for me to teach
you how to do it and answer yourquestions as you're working on
it.
So it's one of those thingswhere You have to really decide,
am I spending time or money?
Because you're going to have tospend one of them to do this.
(14:02):
But in exchange, you're going toshow up higher on Google, you're
going to get traffic to yourwebsite, you're going to build
your email list, you're going tostart building that passive
income funnel that you want,you're going to get leads and
clients and all of that throughyour website.
If we can get it shown to morepeople, so it's really a good
investment and it pays offquickly.
If you hire a good SEO, it cantake 12 to 24 months to really
(14:26):
take hold and to start to see alot of results.
And they're probably anywherefrom one to 2, 000 a month at
minimum to have a consultant dothe work for you.
So you're looking at aninvestment of anywhere from 10
to 24, 000 before you start tosee results.
That's why I say the best thingyou can do with your money as a
small business owner is to learnhow to do SEO.
(14:50):
Just take the class.
It will make it the fastest,easiest way possible within a
budget amount that works formost of us as small business
owners.
I don't know about you.
I don't have 25, 000 to spend ona consultant.
I'm not comfortable spendingthat on a consultant right now
when it's something I couldlearn how to do and have
somebody guide me through it andanswer my questions.
(15:12):
Like That's a better use of mymoney and my time.
The other thing that I see withpeople who hire out SEO is a lot
of the ones, especially rememberyou get what you pay for.
A lot of the ones who aretargeting small business owners
are not good.
I said it.
They're not.
(15:33):
They're targeting you.
They're giving you scaretactics.
They're telling you that youhave to use them.
They're telling you, you know,junk like you're not listed in.
audio search.
You're not in voice search andyou need to do this.
You don't need to do anythingspecial for voice search.
It's all part of the same thingfrom SEO.
You don't need to pay somebodyto list you for that.
(15:54):
I had a student reach out andask me about that the other day.
Is this real or am I gettingscammed?
You don't need to pay to havesomebody do your Google My
Business listing or GoogleGoogle Business Places now.
It used to be Google MyBusiness.
You don't have to pay someone toinsert, verify, and manage that.
I've seen people give quotesthat are like over a thousand
dollars a month to manage GoogleBusiness Places listings to have
(16:18):
you in the Google Mapsdirectory.
Do you know that you can verifythat and manage it yourself in a
matter of about 10 minutes forfree?
Like, you don't need to be up tothat all the time anyway.
Why would you pay somebody athousand dollars a month?
Because small business ownersdon't always know that what
they're being sold on is notlegitimate.
(16:40):
It's not real.
They're not getting really trulywhat they're paying for.
So I try really hard to teachyou because I want to protect
you.
I teach you what to ask, what tolook for, what matters.
When you have enoughunderstanding of how to do SEO
yourself, as your businessstarts to grow, then you can
outsource it because then youare protected.
(17:02):
You know how it works.
You know what questions to askto make sure you're getting what
you pay for.
I have a client that I've workedwith for years.
When they first came to me,Their website, they had a
consultant, they were paying,they had been paying for two
years, their consultant hadnever given them a report, had
never reported on how thingswere going, what traffic were
(17:23):
they getting, what wasincreasing, what was decreasing,
what were their keywordrankings, etc.
Anytime they asked about thereport, the consultant said they
were building them a dashboardso they'd be able to see it all
themselves.
Two years, no dashboard, not onesingle report.
Do you know what was going on inthat two years?
That consultant was cashing thecheck, but I don't think they
(17:46):
were doing any work.
Because when I took over, ittook me a long time to get
access to Google Analytics.
But once I finally did, they hada lot of excuses as to why they
couldn't.
And I finally said, you and Iboth know that this is not true.
You need to give access to this.
This is their account.
You need to give it back tothem.
Funny enough, we got it back.
Once I was able to go in, I wasable to see that the entire time
(18:09):
they had worked with thisconsultant, two years, two full
years, their website traffic hadgone down every single month.
And then when I got in there andI started working on the
website, it was because it waswrong.
Their SEO was wrong.
They had not followed bestpractices.
They had not chosen the rightkeywords.
They had not created content.
They'd written one blog post.
I truly to this day don't knowwhat the person they were paying
(18:32):
was doing.
Now, you better believe thatclient understands exactly what
questions to ask.
And I told him, if in thefuture, you and I don't work
together, I still want you to beprotected.
I don't want anything like thatto ever happen to you again.
So that's what I teach.
That's why I teach and I helpsmall business owners.
I could have started an agencyand gone after large clients.
(18:56):
I had contacts at all sorts ofbig companies when I left, but I
wanted to work with you.
I wanted to be the one to helpyou and to teach you how to do
these things in a way that willhelp your business grow.
Rather than going and workingwith somebody who just has a
huge budget, I didn't want totake an advantage of anymore.
It drove me nuts when I wouldget calls from friends and
(19:19):
family who were small businessowners who were being scammed.
They were getting these callsand told they needed to do these
things and they were completelywrong.
So just a little bit of mybackstory.
That's why I'm here and why I dothis.
So yes.
You can 100 percent do SEO onyour own.
I just would like you to let meteach you how to do it.
Let me protect you.
(19:39):
Let me show you how to do it.
Once you get a good basicunderstanding, you start to
build your business out a bit.
Then if you want to hand it offto somebody, you absolutely can.
It's kind of nice to be able tohand stuff off when you're
ready.
I cannot, you know, I will not.
Uh, lie about that.
It's really nice to hand it offand know that it's done and it's
done the right way.
But let's get you to a pointthat you know it's done and it's
(20:01):
done the right way.
Let's get your site showing upmore often on Google.
Let's get you showing up in theAI Overviews and in ChatGPT and
Perplexity and all the differentplaces that we're going to be
talking about.
Mark your calendar now.
I'm going to be teaching a livefree class the week of the 28th.
So the last week of the month.
We're going to learn all aboutlike the reasons that SEO hasn't
(20:25):
worked up until this point thethree most common mistakes Then
what you do to correct it andthen hopefully you'll join me in
simple SEO content at that pointin time if you're ready You can
get signed up now.
You just go to the website.
Make sure you're on the emaillist.
You can, uh, download thebeginner's guide at
(20:45):
etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies.
Take SEO 101.
If you're ready for simple SEOcontent, you can go directly to
etchedmarketing.
com forward slash yes.
That is the page that includesthe 500 Discount on the course
because you my friend are a VIPbecause you listen to this
podcast.
You're on the email list.
You know what's going on and Iwant to make sure you get that
(21:07):
discounted price when you signup.
I don't want you to have to paythe full price, which is the one
that you get to if you clickthrough the courses button on
the website.
So between you and me, that's alittle savings just for you.
All right.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
I will see you back here nextweek.
Bye for now.
Hi, and welcome back to the Simple SEO Podcast.
I'm so glad that you're herewith me today.
I want to answer a question thatI get all the time, and I'll bet
you have wondered this, thoughtit, wanted to ask it yourself at
some point, too.
And that is, Can I really do SEOon my own?
(00:20):
Like, can I really learn thisand understand it and get it to
work?
Because it seems hard or timeconsuming or really super techy
and I'm just not sure.
So I want to assure you, firstand foremost, yes you can.
If you have someone to guide youand show you how to do it and
(00:41):
explain it and answer yourquestions as they come up.
If you're determined to Googleand YouTube your way through it,
you may truly find it to befrustrating and stressful.
And you may truly struggle to,Get it to work for you.
And I don't say that because Iteach an SEO class.
(01:04):
I say that because I've been inSEO for 15 years, and I know
there is a ton of misinformationout there.
There is so much badinformation.
And it's really hard to knowwhat's good and what's bad.
And I know there's a lot of itbecause I have my students ask
me all the time, Hey, I heard Xin a group.
(01:27):
Hey, my business coach told mewhy I heard this.
And nine times out of 10, whatthey're being told by the other
people in their lives isincorrect.
And many times what they'rebeing told actually is going to
hurt their chances to rank.
And they're left wondering,well, what am I supposed to do?
(01:49):
So that's when they come andthey ask me and they say,
Rachel, what am I supposed todo?
I don't want to make a mistake.
I've worked so hard on my SEO.
My website is doing well.
It's ranking.
I'm getting traffic.
But now my business coach issaying this, and I just want to,
I try so hard not to say.
And how much experience doesyour business coach have in SEO?
(02:12):
Like, there are a lot of thingsI could give you advice on that
I probably don't truly haveenough experience with.
And unfortunately, SEO is one ofthose things.
Like, there are a lot of peopleout there who really don't have
a lot of experience with it whoare telling you how to do it and
what to do.
And so much of it is wrong.
Like, okay, my friend, I'm goingto go on a Slight little tangent
(02:34):
real quick.
Keyword density.
Have you heard people tell youthere is a perfect keyword
density?
You need to have a keyworddensity score.
You need to have 2 percentkeyword density, 3%, 5%,
whatever.
Most people who are teaching SEOare saying you need to have a
specific keyword density score.
However, that's just for her.
(02:54):
Google has outright said, no,you don't.
We don't have a perfect keyworddensity score.
We don't want you to write for aspecific keyword density.
We want you to write for yourideal customer and you will
naturally use your keyword inwhat you're writing and what
you're doing because the contentthat you're creating is about
(03:17):
the keyword.
And that came straight fromDanny Sullivan, who is the head
of Search at Google, who waspreviously my editor at Search
Engine Land.
Danny's been in SEO forever.
Prior to Danny, Matt Cutts wasour Google go to.
Basically, if Matt Cutts So ifyou're reading an article and
(03:44):
you see something and it saysit's from Danny Sullivan or he's
been quoted, there's probably areally good chance you can count
on whatever Danny said.
If you see something and it'sfrom Matt Cutts, Matt hasn't
been with Google in gosh,probably seven or eight years,
maybe longer than that.
So you might want to doublecheck that it's current, but.
in the past, anything Matt saidwas good too.
(04:05):
Anyway, there's my littletangent about keyword density
scores because I'm tired ofhearing about it.
I got an email in my inbox thismorning about this new tool that
can help you verify your keyworddensity and I'm like, oh my
gosh, you don't understand therules as far as Google is
concerned.
This is part of why learning SEOon your own is So hard because
you don't know, you're justlearning.
(04:27):
You don't know what you shouldor should not be doing.
You don't know who to trust orwho to listen to you.
And so it's hard and it'sfrustrating.
That's why I always say.
The best thing, if it's in thebudget, if you can make it work,
is join me in simple SEOcontent.
I cut through all the extra, allthe fluff, all the junk that you
really don't need, and I justteach you what you need to know
(04:52):
to be able to succeed and beable to drive results.
And driving results, in my mind,is we're getting traffic to your
website, we're showing up higheron Google, And those people who
are coming to your website arethe right people because they're
getting on your email list,they're buying your products,
they're booking your services,all of that.
(05:12):
We don't want to send a bunch oftraffic to our website that is
irrelevant to our business.
That does us no good.
I actually had that situationand It kind of killed me because
I took off a blog post aboutalmost a year ago.
It was a great post, and itranked so high.
It ranked in position number oneon Google.
(05:33):
It got a lot of traffic everysingle month.
But my business had evolved andchanged over the 7 or 8 years
since I wrote that post.
And it was no longer relevant.
The people who came and found mefrom that post, we're not going
to engage with my currentbusiness because it was a post
(05:55):
on how to nail your firstFacebook Live.
Well, I don't teach anythingabout doing Facebook Live
anymore.
I don't have resources for them.
I used to have a Facebook Liveguide to help you, like, feel
comfortable and be ready andwhat you should do and what you
should talk about.
So I had a lot of people comingto my website from that
(06:15):
particular post because theywere finding it on Google.
But it was no longer applicableto my business.
And so I made a really harddecision and I removed the post
from my blog.
And so I lost a lot of trafficbecause of that, because that
post ranked number one, it got alot of traffic, but the traffic
that I got.
After I removed that was bettertraffic.
(06:38):
They were more likely to engage.
They were more likely to sign upfor an email opt in.
They were more likely to getsomething because it was more
relevant to them.
That Facebook live guide, thataudience wasn't going to convert
for SEO, content marketing,podcasting.
(06:58):
Maybe they would go forpodcasting, but I don't know.
So that's what I want you tothink about.
What do you have?
Who are you bringing to yourwebsite?
What are we trying to do withthe website when you're doing it
on your own?
You want to be very strategic.
And that's part of what we talkabout in Simple SEO content is
being very strategic in ourapproach.
I had another student who joinedme.
(07:20):
She had a pretty goodunderstanding of SEO before she
joined the course.
She's been in about a year.
She was getting some traffic.
She originally asked me becauseit felt like her traffic was
down and something was goingwrong.
And so we looked at it and it'slike, well, you're ranking for
these things, but do these applyto your business?
And she said, no, not really.
I'm like, okay, then why are wetargeting these keywords?
(07:42):
We need to switch it around andwe need to target keywords that
are gonna bring the right peopleto your business.
So she worked on that and shesaid she found like at first,
she, it kind of felt like shewas throwing spaghetti against
the wall, trying to figure outwhat she could rank for, where
she could get traffic.
But now after taking the courseand being there and asking
questions, and she's a starstudent, like she does
(08:02):
everything she's supposed to do,she's found that she's able to
be incredibly strategic and sheknows before she starts writing
her posts that she has a reallygood chance of ranking for this
one.
because of the fact sheunderstands how keyword rankings
happen, how Google determineswho's going to rank.
So she can look at it and shecan pick a keyword and say,
(08:23):
okay, I have a really goodchance of ranking for this
keyword, which is amazing.
And that's one of the benefitsof taking a class and learning
how to do this.
I've had blog posts that I'vewritten that have ranked on page
one of Google within like aweek.
If you know what you're doingand you're able to create
content and Google understandsyour site and they know you and
(08:44):
they trust you, you can rankreally fast and you can start
getting traffic quickly to yournew content.
But if you've got mistakes onyour site and you don't even
know it, You're going tostruggle.
And that's where I end up withpeople saying, I tried SEO
before and it didn't work oreven worse, I don't know if it
worked because I don'tunderstand the numbers in
(09:06):
analytics.
Have you ever thought that?
Like, I don't even understandwhat the numbers mean in
analytics.
I log in there and I, all I seeis a whole bunch of numbers and
it's kind of overwhelming.
And so I just close it out andgo, hope it's good.
I teach you what those numbersmean, and more importantly,
which ones matter and which onesdon't, so that you can look at
(09:26):
it and be strategic.
Hey, this type, this type blogpost works really well for my
audience.
This type over here does not.
Oh, look, this one is rankingreally well and is driving a ton
of traffic, Rachel's Facebooklive guide.
And it's the wrong traffic.
I don't even offer somethinglike that anymore.
This is not gonna help me.
(09:46):
So that's why I think it'sreally important to learn SEO
from somebody like me, hopefullyme, who has been in the business
for a long time, who's seeneverything.
I have seen everything.
I have tried to, I have workedon clients in every niche, every
(10:07):
niche, I'm pretty sure, over theyears.
SEO will work for you.
There's no niche that's toocompetitive.
There's no niche that you can'tdo this in.
I am in probably, realistically,the single most competitive
niche from an SEO standpoint.
I am targeting SEO.
There is no harder niche thanthe one I'm in and yet I can
(10:32):
find opportunities to rank onpage one.
I will probably never rank forwhat is SEO or how do you do SEO
because the SEO tools create aton of content.
All the tool companies have beenblogging for years and they have
tons of content and they'remachines, they're content
(10:52):
powerhouses and they rank andthat's okay.
Because you know what?
The person searching what is SEOprobably isn't the one that is
going to come in and take aclass with me.
The person who's searching SEOfor solopreneurs or what are the
numbers mean in GoogleAnalytics?
Or is my SEO working?
(11:13):
That's more my person and thoseare more the type Queries that I
go after.
And that's what I want you tounderstand.
Like when you take a class andyou learn and you understand,
you can be very strategic andyou can have your content where
people are looking.
The other thing that I'm seeingis we have a lot of changes.
I'm going to talk about this inthe next couple of podcast
episodes.
(11:33):
We have a lot of changes withAI, and I'm getting a lot of
questions about AI and AI searchat the core of it.
is having your website properlyoptimized.
Following SEO best practiceswill help you have a better
chance of being one of thewebsites that shows up in chat
GPT or perplexity or the AIoverviews and you can get
(11:56):
traffic to your website from allof those places.
We're really talking about brandvisibility among different
search engines in differentareas.
I have an entire bonus that Iadded just recently.
On how to optimize and formatyour content for AI search
engines and chatbots and all ofthat because this is brand new,
(12:19):
it's evolving, and I wanted tobe able to teach you how to do
that as well.
So what I want you to remember,you can do this on your own.
You can learn, but the best wayto do it is to take a class.
Let me help you.
Let me guide you through this.
If you're ready to get started,what I want you to do is get the
(12:40):
free, um, Beginner's Guide toSEO.
It kind of walks you through,step by step, what it is, how it
works.
It'll get you started.
And then take the SEO 101 class.
That's going to help you kind ofunderstand how, a little more
about it.
And then also how you getstarted.
And you can make the choice, youknow, do you want to hire
someone or do you want to do ityourself?
(13:00):
And I know.
I know, I know, I know.
Most people don't want to putthe time into it.
They say, I'm too busy.
I'm already working on anotherclass.
I've already got something elsegoing on.
I need to focus on this.
I just want to pay someone to doit.
And I get it.
Because there are times where Ijust want to pay someone to do
it too.
I don't want to be the one tocreate the social media graphic.
(13:21):
Or I don't want to be the one tocreate, you know, whatever it
is.
And I'd rather just pay someone.
But the bottom line is whenyou're hiring someone to do SEO,
a good SEO strategist isexpensive.
A crummy SEO strategist is quitecheap.
You don't want a crummy one.
In SEO you really truly do getwhat you pay for.
(13:41):
I do work one on one with peoplebut it's like 5, 000 for me to
optimize your website for youversus 1, 000 for me to teach
you how to do it and answer yourquestions as you're working on
it.
So it's one of those thingswhere You have to really decide,
am I spending time or money?
Because you're going to have tospend one of them to do this.
(14:02):
But in exchange, you're going toshow up higher on Google, you're
going to get traffic to yourwebsite, you're going to build
your email list, you're going tostart building that passive
income funnel that you want,you're going to get leads and
clients and all of that throughyour website.
If we can get it shown to morepeople, so it's really a good
investment and it pays offquickly.
If you hire a good SEO, it cantake 12 to 24 months to really
(14:26):
take hold and to start to see alot of results.
And they're probably anywherefrom one to 2, 000 a month at
minimum to have a consultant dothe work for you.
So you're looking at aninvestment of anywhere from 10
to 24, 000 before you start tosee results.
That's why I say the best thingyou can do with your money as a
small business owner is to learnhow to do SEO.
(14:50):
Just take the class.
It will make it the fastest,easiest way possible within a
budget amount that works formost of us as small business
owners.
I don't know about you.
I don't have 25, 000 to spend ona consultant.
I'm not comfortable spendingthat on a consultant right now
when it's something I couldlearn how to do and have
somebody guide me through it andanswer my questions.
(15:12):
Like That's a better use of mymoney and my time.
The other thing that I see withpeople who hire out SEO is a lot
of the ones, especially rememberyou get what you pay for.
A lot of the ones who aretargeting small business owners
are not good.
I said it.
They're not.
(15:33):
They're targeting you.
They're giving you scaretactics.
They're telling you that youhave to use them.
They're telling you, you know,junk like you're not listed in.
audio search.
You're not in voice search andyou need to do this.
You don't need to do anythingspecial for voice search.
It's all part of the same thingfrom SEO.
You don't need to pay somebodyto list you for that.
(15:54):
I had a student reach out andask me about that the other day.
Is this real or am I gettingscammed?
You don't need to pay to havesomebody do your Google My
Business listing or GoogleGoogle Business Places now.
It used to be Google MyBusiness.
You don't have to pay someone toinsert, verify, and manage that.
I've seen people give quotesthat are like over a thousand
dollars a month to manage GoogleBusiness Places listings to have
(16:18):
you in the Google Mapsdirectory.
Do you know that you can verifythat and manage it yourself in a
matter of about 10 minutes forfree?
Like, you don't need to be up tothat all the time anyway.
Why would you pay somebody athousand dollars a month?
Because small business ownersdon't always know that what
they're being sold on is notlegitimate.
(16:40):
It's not real.
They're not getting really trulywhat they're paying for.
So I try really hard to teachyou because I want to protect
you.
I teach you what to ask, what tolook for, what matters.
When you have enoughunderstanding of how to do SEO
yourself, as your businessstarts to grow, then you can
outsource it because then youare protected.
(17:02):
You know how it works.
You know what questions to askto make sure you're getting what
you pay for.
I have a client that I've workedwith for years.
When they first came to me,Their website, they had a
consultant, they were paying,they had been paying for two
years, their consultant hadnever given them a report, had
never reported on how thingswere going, what traffic were
(17:23):
they getting, what wasincreasing, what was decreasing,
what were their keywordrankings, etc.
Anytime they asked about thereport, the consultant said they
were building them a dashboardso they'd be able to see it all
themselves.
Two years, no dashboard, not onesingle report.
Do you know what was going on inthat two years?
That consultant was cashing thecheck, but I don't think they
(17:46):
were doing any work.
Because when I took over, ittook me a long time to get
access to Google Analytics.
But once I finally did, they hada lot of excuses as to why they
couldn't.
And I finally said, you and Iboth know that this is not true.
You need to give access to this.
This is their account.
You need to give it back tothem.
Funny enough, we got it back.
Once I was able to go in, I wasable to see that the entire time
(18:09):
they had worked with thisconsultant, two years, two full
years, their website traffic hadgone down every single month.
And then when I got in there andI started working on the
website, it was because it waswrong.
Their SEO was wrong.
They had not followed bestpractices.
They had not chosen the rightkeywords.
They had not created content.
They'd written one blog post.
I truly to this day don't knowwhat the person they were paying
(18:32):
was doing.
Now, you better believe thatclient understands exactly what
questions to ask.
And I told him, if in thefuture, you and I don't work
together, I still want you to beprotected.
I don't want anything like thatto ever happen to you again.
So that's what I teach.
That's why I teach and I helpsmall business owners.
I could have started an agencyand gone after large clients.
(18:56):
I had contacts at all sorts ofbig companies when I left, but I
wanted to work with you.
I wanted to be the one to helpyou and to teach you how to do
these things in a way that willhelp your business grow.
Rather than going and workingwith somebody who just has a
huge budget, I didn't want totake an advantage of anymore.
It drove me nuts when I wouldget calls from friends and
(19:19):
family who were small businessowners who were being scammed.
They were getting these callsand told they needed to do these
things and they were completelywrong.
So just a little bit of mybackstory.
That's why I'm here and why I dothis.
So yes.
You can 100 percent do SEO onyour own.
I just would like you to let meteach you how to do it.
Let me protect you.
(19:39):
Let me show you how to do it.
Once you get a good basicunderstanding, you start to
build your business out a bit.
Then if you want to hand it offto somebody, you absolutely can.
It's kind of nice to be able tohand stuff off when you're
ready.
I cannot, you know, I will not.
Uh, lie about that.
It's really nice to hand it offand know that it's done and it's
done the right way.
But let's get you to a pointthat you know it's done and it's
(20:01):
done the right way.
Let's get your site showing upmore often on Google.
Let's get you showing up in theAI Overviews and in ChatGPT and
Perplexity and all the differentplaces that we're going to be
talking about.
Mark your calendar now.
I'm going to be teaching a livefree class the week of the 28th.
So the last week of the month.
We're going to learn all aboutlike the reasons that SEO hasn't
(20:25):
worked up until this point thethree most common mistakes Then
what you do to correct it andthen hopefully you'll join me in
simple SEO content at that pointin time if you're ready You can
get signed up now.
You just go to the website.
Make sure you're on the emaillist.
You can, uh, download thebeginner's guide at
(20:45):
etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies.
Take SEO 101.
If you're ready for simple SEOcontent, you can go directly to
etchedmarketing.
com forward slash yes.
That is the page that includesthe 500 Discount on the course
because you my friend are a VIPbecause you listen to this
podcast.
You're on the email list.
You know what's going on and Iwant to make sure you get that
(21:07):
discounted price when you signup.
I don't want you to have to paythe full price, which is the one
that you get to if you clickthrough the courses button on
the website.
So between you and me, that's alittle savings just for you.
All right.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
I will see you back here nextweek.
Bye for now.
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