Improving Your Website's SEO Ranking
In this session, I’m diving deep into an essential topic in marketing for practitioners - SEO. I covered the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for attracting more clients to your website and how it can lead to real business results. Samantha provided practical strategies to improve your website's SEO ranking, from submitting your website sitemap to utilizing Google Search Console effectively. This session is packed with actionable insights for practitioners looking to elevate their online presence and attract the right clients.
Takeaways
The impact of SEO in generating warm leads from people already seeking the services offered
Using SEO as a long-term marketing strategy
Submitting website sitemap to Google Search Console
The importance of incorporating keywords into headings and subheadings
Using tools like Ubersuggest to find relevant keywords
Optimizing metadata for search engines
The significance of changing URL slugs to include keywords
Measuring Website SEO impact
The long-term impact of SEO in generating consistent leads
Meet the Speaker: Samantha Mabe
Samantha Mabe, creative director of Lemon and the Sea, designs thoughtful websites for experts who want to make a positive first impression so that they can get started with the right-fit clients faster. With her signature framework, Samantha has designed and customized websites for all different types of entrepreneurs. When she is not digging into design and strategy, Samantha loves reading (her goal is to read 200 books this year), adventures with her kiddo, and trying to keep up with her Netflix queue.
Transcript
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Welcome to Elevate Your Practice Summit
[00:00:04] The Power of SEO for Local Businesses
[00:02:02] Getting Started with Google Search Console
[00:05:18] Optimizing Your Website's Front End for SEO
[00:10:24] Mastering the Back End: Metadata and More
[00:16:14] Measuring Your SEO Success
[00:18:52] Long-Term Benefits of SEO Marketing
[00:19:37] Exclusive Freebie: Homepage Writer
[00:20:42] Closing Remarks and Summit Invitation
Full Transcript
Welcome to Elevate Your Practice Summit
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: Thanks so much for listening to another session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit.
The Power of SEO for Local Businesses
[00:00:04] Samantha Mabe: In the vein of magnetic marketing, I want to talk about a marketing channel that many people ask me about, especially my website design clients and people who are interested in website design, and that is SEO.
We all want to find more clients for our business and We all know that search engine optimization showing up in search results is a great way to do that, especially if you have a local business and you are working with one on one clients. Many times people are turning to search engines like Google to find people who are going to be able to solve their problems. SEO isn't just something that we should be doing, it can get real results in our business.
When you think about people searching for your business, you should realize that thousands of people are probably searching for something like what you offer. I did a video on TikTok about the number of searches that people do Every month for things like therapist near me, naturopath near me, chiropractor near me, and each of them is 10 to 300, 000 searches. And that means you are having people search for your service and they want to hire you.
People who are coming To your website from SEO results are a warm audience because they're already looking for what you offer, and they're just trying to find the right fit in the right location.
And so what we want to do is make sure that our website is set up to bring more people to us and make sure that then we're using strategy and design to convert them into clients.
This session is all about improving your website SEO ranking.
Getting Started with Google Search Console
[00:02:02] Samantha Mabe: The first thing I want to mention is something that is the easiest step you can take to start ranking higher on Google, but it's one that so many people forget. Even if you are working with a marketing or an SEO agency. And that is submitting your website sitemap to Google Search Console.
This is an essential tool for website owners who are looking to improve their SEO rankings because this is the tool that you can use to let Google know what your website is all about. All you have to do is create a free account on Google Search Console, add your website to it. You have to make sure that you show up as an owner and then you're going to add your site map
So if you're in Google Search Console and you've got your website on there on the left hand menu There's going to be a link that says site maps All you're going to do is type in sitemap. xml and hit submit and it will run through everything for you.
The reason you want to do this is because that sitemap is going to tell Google exactly how your website is put together, how everything is linked together, and it's going to make sure Google crawls your site. So it takes a look at everything, it reads everything, and then it can show it in search results. So that is the first reason you want to use Search Console.
The second reason is that it's really going to give you some useful information about what is bringing people to your site. So if you go to queries, you'll be able to actually see which keywords and phrases that people are typing in and your website is showing up. It can give you a ton of really good information about if you're showing up for the words you actually want to be seen for.
I want you to make sure as the first action step you take from this is to make sure your website site map is submitted to Google Search Console. You can do it in 10 minutes. It's all free. And all you have to do is make sure that everything shows up.
The next thing you're going to want to do with Search Console is as you make changes to your website, you're going to want to go back into Search Console, type in the URL that you have made edits to, and then tell it to re index that page. Google does this automatically, but sometimes it can take a couple of days. And we want the effort that we put into things to show up very quickly. So if you change your copy, if you change your SEO settings that we're going to talk about in this session, I want to make sure that Google knows that. All you have to do is put that URL in and tell it to re index or index that page if it hasn't already.
So that's how you're going to use Search Console and that is going to make a huge impact on whether or not your website is showing up and in how you can measure what you are ranking for when people are searching.
Optimizing Your Website's Front End for SEO
[00:05:18] Samantha Mabe: Now, let's get into the actual website and the SEO things that you can do to make sure that your website does show up in front of the right people. When we think about SEO, I want you to remember that there are two major buckets that we have to consider. One of those buckets is the actual copy, the words on the page. And that is what is visible to everybody who's coming to your website. But there's also this whole back end piece. And that includes things like your page titles, your page descriptions, your meta tags, your alt tags, all these kind of things that most people are never going to see, but do really impact how a search engine sees your website.
When you land on anybody's website, search engines look at it the same way that people do. And so it will read, from the top down, starting with headings, and then going into the body copy. So a search engine looks at your website by reading anything that's heading 1 or h1, then heading 2 or h2, heading 3, 4, etc., and then it goes into the paragraph copy.
And the reason it's important to know this is because you want to make sure that the keywords that you want to rank for things like your industry, your location, the specific type of client that you work with are in those headings, because those are the things that search engines look at first.
When you're writing your headlines and your subheadlines, you want to make sure those have keywords in them. And then your body copy, that paragraph text, is going to go into more detail. And this is the same way that most people read a page. We read the headline, and then we'll scroll down. We'll see a section title that we say, Oh, okay, that's interesting. And then we'll read the details under that. A lot of people aren't going to read your whole page, and so we want to make sure we catch the eye and the eye of the search engine in our headings.
Now, how do we make sure that we're incorporating these keywords into our headlines and our heading tags? The best thing to do is to choose one to two keywords that you want to rank for each page of your website. And the more specific you can get, the better.
With a caveat, if you're getting really specific, there might not be enough people searching for that term. Something like chiropractor, you're never going to rank for chiropractor because there are so many websites out there competing for that term. If you want to rank for chiropractor in Richmond, You have a better chance because we're being more specific on the location. If you want to rank for something like women's chiropractor in Richmond, you have an even better chance. But if you are trying to do something like women with ADHD go to a chiropractor in Richmond, there might not be a ton of search results.
The best way to find out which keywords you should be using is to go and use a tool like Ubersuggest. It's a free plugin, you put it on Google Chrome, you go to Google, and you type in the search terms you think you might want to rank for, and it will actually tell you how many people are searching for that term. And that way you know, okay, there are 300, 000 people searching for this term, I'm probably not going to be able to use just that on my website. But if there's Zero people searching for it, or ten people searching for it every month, it's probably not going to bring enough traffic. So you want to find something in the middle.
And then you're actually going to use those keywords in your headings. The reason it's so important to think about the actual search terms that people are using is because we want to avoid jargon in our website, because that is not what's actually going to bring people to us, and it's not what's going to convert them either.
So somebody told me a really good example of this, and I think it's very helpful. Many of us have something like an investment page in our business. How much is it going to cost to work with us? The problem with titling your page investment is that people are not searching for what is the investment to work with a naturopathic doctor. They're looking for how much does it cost? What is the price? How much will I spend? And so we want to make sure that the words we're using on our website actually align with the words people are using in the real world.
Okay, that's the front end.
Mastering the Back End: Metadata and More
[00:10:24] Samantha Mabe: Let's go to the back end of our website and talk about metadata, and what we need to consider and why it's so important.
Metadata is information, text, that is given to search engines. But people who actually visit your website aren't generally going to see it. If somebody were to Google the name of your business, the title that they see there, the short three sentences that they see there, the list of pages and those descriptions, that comes from the metadata of your site.
And so what we want to do is make sure that we are including our business name, your personal name, the types of clients you work with, your location. All of that needs to be included here.
So you've got a couple of things you need to work on. One, you need a site title. So this is the overall title of your website. Most website platforms, when you start your site, is going to default that to the name of your business. But I want you to go a step further, and I want you to add some keywords there.
For mine, my site title is Lemon and the Sea, and then I have a little vertical line, and then it says Website Design for Health and Wellness Professionals because I want to actually be known to work with people in that industry. And when somebody Googles website design for healthcare professional, I want my website to show up. Lemon and the Sea isn't necessarily going to do that.
So add some some keywords to that title. It could be your location, if you're location specific. It can be the industry that you're in. It can be the specific type of client that you work with.
The next thing that you have is your site description. So this is about 300 characters. It's going to be the description that shows up in Google or other search engines that gets people to come to your website. They're going to read that, they're going to say, okay, that answers enough information. That seems like it's a good fit for my query that I submitted. I'm going to click on that website. We want this to also include things like location, your specialty, your specific name, all of those types of things. It needs to be written out in sentence form. We're not making a list of just keywords. And then we want to make it compelling enough, speak to the problem or the transformation somebody is looking for.
And then each page actually has a title and a description that you can add as well, follows the same Method, and this is where we can get a little bit more specific. What I don't want you to do is copy the same description from the site and paste it on every page. Google is really smart. It knows when we're trying to keyword stuff, and so what we want to do is actually change it up. Talk about what that specific page is going to include.
This is also really helpful for blog posts and things like case studies. If you listen to Brittany Herzberg's session, when you are writing your title and your description for pages, blog posts, case studies, anything that you have on your website, you want to be really specific about what that page is about, what they're going to learn on that page and include some of the specific keywords for that page.
We're not always trying to get people to massage therapist from every post. Maybe we're trying to answer a question. So what does it look like to visit a massage therapist? Or what can I expect at my first massage. In a blog post, that's the information we then want to include in the title. And description for that post or page.
The next place you're going to have metadata that I don't want you to forget, because it is easy to forget, is in your images. All of your images have alt text. And this is created so that people who use screen readers or need other accessibility tools can look at your website. But it can also help with your SEO.
So in every image that you have, I want you to open it up. I want you to add alt text. Describe the image. That can be something really generic, like a woman talking, sitting at a computer, but it could also be something like a website designer working on a website for a naturopathic doctor. Both of those describe what's happening in the image, but one of those has more keywords than the other. And I want you to make sure every image on your site has one.
And if you have any images that are actually graphics that have text, I want you to describe What that text is. So tell us what the text says for people who aren't going to actually be able to see the image.
Another thing you can do to improve your SEO is to change your URL slug. So when you go to your website, you will have something like my website dot com slash. Anything that comes after that slash is the URL slug, and you want to make sure you include some keywords there as well. This may be shorter or longer depending on what page you're going to. Blog posts might be longer because you have the title in there. Something like an about page might just be about or about us or about our practice. But we want to make sure it's not anything generic, just like page number one or blog number two, something like that.
The more places we can include keywords and phrases that we want to be known for on our website, both on the front end and on the back end, the more we are going to see results from search engines.
Measuring Your SEO Success
[00:16:14] Samantha Mabe: Let's talk about how we can measure whether our efforts are actually working. I mentioned that you want to have Search Consoles set up so that you can actually see your queries, what people are seeing your website for, and what they're clicking through. That's a great place to start. If you go in there, you can see a list of keywords and phrases that people are typing into Google, and then what it will show you is, yes, your website showed up, this many people saw it for this specific phrase, this many people clicked through to your website.
The first place I want you to start here is by looking at, do these keywords and phrases actually align with what I want to be known for? Are they in a location that I don't serve? Are they for services that I don't offer? If that's the case, we know we need to make a change on our website.
If you are showing up for the right keywords, then the, what you need to do is double down on using those keywords. And the best way to do that is to add more content through blog posts and then get more links to your website. So if you can go on podcasts or guest posts for other people, they can link to your website. And yeah, you might get some traffic from those sites, but those links back to your site also tell Google that you are a trustworthy source and that makes them rank you higher.
The other thing that you can do, and I've always recommend this when I'm doing an audit for people, go into an incognito window in your browser and actually search for your business, your name, your service in your location and see where you rank. Do you show up on that first page of Google? How high is that ranking? And you can track that over time to see, okay, are the changes that I've made to my copy, are the changes that I've made to my site description actually impacting whether or not people are seeing my website?
Other things you can do include making sure you've got social media set up. So the more blazes your business shows up, the more legitimate you look and the more chances people have to find you.
You can also make sure you have a Google business profile set up with your location and your information. Google really likes that because it's one of their products. And if you can create that, you're more likely to show up for people as well.
Those are a couple things that you can do.
Long-Term Benefits of SEO Marketing
[00:18:52] Samantha Mabe: I think SEO marketing is one of the best marketing strategies that you can do, because it's a long term strategy. When you get started, you might see some results to begin with, But those results are going to last a really long time. I still get people landing on my website for blog posts that I wrote five years ago and they end up becoming clients. I don't have to do anything to those posts to get people to come to my site.
And so what we're trying to do is just do the groundwork initially, continue to add to it through really relevant blog posts that answer people's questions, and then let it take its time and work for us and our business.
Exclusive Freebie: Homepage Writer
[00:19:37] Samantha Mabe: If you need some help writing your website description, I have a really cool freebie for you. It's called the Homepage Writer and it's magic. It helps you write your headline, your subheading, your call to action, and your page description, which you can use for your site description, for your business. You can get that at lemonandthesea. com slash homepage writer. You enter a little bit of information about your business in there, and it is going to give you all of that information that you can then tweak and add to your website. It's going to include the keywords that you need. It's going to give you that site description so that you can start to build your SEO results in your business.
You can also find me online at lemon and the sea. com and follow me on Instagram and TikTok at lemon and the sea. I love sharing tips about SEO and website design. And I would love to hear from you about this summit in general and about your SEO marketing results.
Closing Remarks and Summit Invitation
[00:20:42] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for tuning into this session of Elevate Your Practice. I was so excited to talk with all of the guests in this round of the Summit, and I hope that you'll share it with a colleague or a friend who could use this magnetic marketing magic as well. You can send them to elevateyourpractice. co to register now, and they will get access to the Summit right away.
