Signs your SEO isn't working even though you think it is. SEO tips for entrepreneurs.

Trying to learn SEO on your own can be tough. Find out how it can be tricky and make you think your SEO is working when it really isn't. Learn how to spot SEO keyword issues, traffic issues, and lead generation problems with your SEO strategy. Find out how to save yourself wasted time, effort, and money in today's episode. 

Transcript

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Do you wonder if what you're doing for SEO is working? Are you adding content, maybe writing, uh, meta descriptions, title tags, maybe choosing keywords, maybe even writing blog posts, and you're kind of starting to see some idea that this might be working. You get a feeling that maybe you're finally figuring it out. If, so, I wanna talk today about three times that like. It can seem like your SEO is working, but if you don't know, you can actually like be hurting yourself because I did an interesting thing. So as you know, I teach the free SEO classes. I've taught them live every week for months and months and months. Now, it's done more on a quarterly basis because I'm gonna be honest, teaching that live every week. Is a whole lot. Anybody who's ever done a webinar knows that's a lot of work. It was fascinating though, and doing that gave me the opportunity to get a ton of insights and information and really see what you are struggling with, where you're getting it, right, where you're making mistakes, where you're confused, all of that. So in that webinar, I've had over 10,000 people go through that particular training. Um, in there talking to over 10,000 people. Most of the time people did not know if what they were doing was right or they weren't sure how to even get started. Like 97% of the people who attend and comment and like participate in the polls in that webinar said they weren't sure. About 3% said, I'm pretty sure I got this figured out. I'm doing really good. SEO is working for me. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. And so I was really curious because often when I hear, I'm pretty sure I'm doing this or it's working, I'm getting traffic. There are parts of it that are working, but there are parts of it that still are not. So I went through and I looked at about 10 of those sites where people had said. I've got it. I know what I'm doing. And they were all doing things. Absolutely. First and foremost, every one of them was doing things. They had title tags, they had meta description, they had created content. Um, most of them had header tags marked on their pages. Like they had done a lot of things, however. Very quickly I could identify where they had made mistakes and where they had done things that while it may feel like it's working, it's maybe not working as well as it could. And it was one of those situations where it's like, oh, I could actually help this person. Yeah, I could help this person. Yeah, I could help this person too. Oh my gosh. They don't realize that that's wrong. So some of the mistakes I saw. Some of them people had a whole bunch of header tags. Header tags. It used to be that you could only have one H one tag on a page, or you would confuse Google. What I'm seeing now is that rule is changing or has changed, so that's not as big a deal, but that did used to be a huge deal. That used to be a big, big issue if you had more than one H one tag. But the things that I saw, like super long meta descriptions. Now with this. Is it gonna hurt you? Not necessarily. Is it ideal for SEO? Absolutely not. Because if your meta description is over 160 characters, it's going to truncate, which means you no longer have control over the message that your potential customer is seeing in the search results when they're searching on Google. And don't you wanna have control of the. Information that they're gonna see. Don't you wanna have control of the narrative about your business versus having Google just truncate it when it hits the 160 characters mark. Yeah. Right. I know. I sure do. Other issues I saw were. People targeting keywords that were way too competitive for their site. They were not gonna rank for them, or they were words that nobody was going to search or they had issues with, like using the same keyword on every page that I looked at. Google is only going to rank you for any given keyword twice, which means you don't wanna use the same keyword on every single page because that's going to limit your ranking potential. And when you limit your ranking potential. You limit your visibility potential. When you limit your visibility potential. You limit the number of people who can find your business, who get to know you, who want to work with you. So you ultimately limit your leads and your sales. So we don't wanna make that mistake. I also saw a number of them that had, um, elements that were wrong. They had things that were missing. Some of them had had no new content added to the site in like three or four years, and most of them had done nothing yet for AI based search or ai, S-E-O-G-E-O, whatever you wanna call it. It's all the same thing. So when you are doing it on your own, you don't know what you don't know. And I had a student, um, talk about this recently and I asked her, I said, why did you decide to join the program? And she's, because she's in one of those spots where like, she had done a pretty good job. She had some mistakes we had to fix, you know, a few things strategically and get it turned around. But she's really, she's doing great now. And she said, I realized I got to the point where I knew as much as I could on my own, but I didn't know what I didn't know and my time and my effort was worth doing the best that I possibly could. And she had put time and effort, she'd also spent money'cause she'd hired a VA to help her with it and she was getting some results, but she felt like she needed to learn more. So she joined me. She. You know, we worked together. I looked at the site and I was able to very quickly identify, this is good. This is not change this, do this, do that, like that type insight, which helped her. She's ranking, she's getting leads from chat, GPT. She's getting leads from Google. She's actually making, right now about$5,000 a month extra income from her leads. From her SEO work. So that's part of it is like when you're trying to learn it on your own, you don't know what you don't know. You don't know that you've made mistakes, you don't know that you've done things that are not actually going to pay off for you. The next thing that I see. Is you're getting traffic, but you're not generating leads. And then the question is like, well, why aren't we getting leads? Are we getting the right people to the site? Are we getting the wrong people? Like where's the breakdown? Is it that they don't like your opt-in, they don't want your freebie? Is it that you don't have it on all of your pages? Is it that there's some blockage with your consult call form? Or they don't want a consult call, like, what's going on? So that's where we really wanna diagnose. You know, you come in the program, I teach you how to track all of this and how to figure out which pages are getting traffic and do you have the right lead generation ca, you know, do you have a lead capture on the pages that it should be on, and where should you put it on the page? Is it in the right spot? Are there other things that we should do? It's not necessarily SEO, but it's part of your SEO funnel. We wanna make sure that you are capturing those leads, not just that they are coming into your world, because honestly, website visitors don't pay the bills, my friends. What pays the bills are leads that turn into paying customers. You run a business, I run a business. We all know that we need more than just podcast downloads or more than just website traffic. To grow a profitable business, we need to make sure we're connecting with the right people. So that's a big part of it. When you're doing SEO on your own. Often you're making mistakes that you don't know. Maybe you're getting traffic, but you're not getting leads. Maybe you are ranking for keywords and you think that that's good, but what you don't realize is you're ranking for keywords that nobody is searching. So yes, you're at the top of Google, but no, nobody's coming to that page because nobody's searching for that particular keyword. Maybe you're creating content. That isn't tied the right way to your business, so you're, you're getting traffic, but you're not getting leads because of that, the most common issues I see are that you are creating content, but you're not getting traffic. You are creating, you are getting traffic, but you're not getting leads or just in general, your business is not visible. Like you're not showing up in chat. GPT, you're only showing up for your business name. If somebody goes to Google and they search your business name, you show up. And so you may feel like, okay, my SEO is working however. If they go to Google and they search your business name and you show up, great. But if they go to Google and they search keywords related to your business, or they search information related to your niche and you don't show up, that's not so good because what's just happened there is that your business is only visible for people who already know who you are today. If you want your business to grow, you need to be visible. For people who don't know you today, you need to be visible for people who are searching on Google and Chat GPT, and anywhere else that they happen to be searching. So if you've been trying to do SEO on your own, you have a feeling it's working, you're not a hundred percent sure. You know what? Send me a note. Let's look at, you know, join me when I do the next popup group and the next training launch for simple SEO content. Ask me to take a look at your site. I'm happy to look at it. When you're in those groups and you're asking questions like I do website, SEO reviews, we take a look at it. I'm happy to look at it and tell you, you know, is this the right key word? Does it look like you've done the right? You know the right things because honestly, my friend, if you don't need my help, if you don't need the program, I don't want you to take it because I don't wanna take your money. I know there are a lot of people out there who try to take advantage, especially of us as small business owners, entrepreneurs, we all get the stupid spammy emails every single day. I'm sure you get'em the same as I do. We don't. I don't want you to spend money that you don't need to spend. If you need my help, I want to help you because your website should be your number one lead generator for your business. So if you are still really focused on building your business off referrals, referrals are great, your network is great, but it's not going to scale very likely. It will not scale to the level that you want to reach your goals. That's where your website really comes in. If we can. Get the right content. So if you're trying to do this on your own and you think it's working, let's take a look and just make sure. Are you getting leads? Are the right pages getting traffic? Are you ranking for keywords that are not related to your business name? Because I want this to work for you. If you wanna get started right away, you don't. You like the group concept? That's amazing. Make sure you're on my email list so that you're the first to know when the group opens for the next cohort. It is. Just cohort launch. Now, if you don't like the group and you would rather work one-on-one, send me a DM on Instagram, email me, reply back to my weekly email and ask if I have an opening. I work one-on-one with. Entrepreneurs as well. Those who really do not wanna have to be in a group, they just want somebody to tell them exactly what to do. My situation, my business, my problems. Just help me with that, Rachel. I don't care about anyone else. And you know what? My friend, it is okay to say that it is okay to say, I don't wanna have to listen to anybody else. I don't wanna have to be in a group. I just want to be able to work with you one-on-one. I do marketing, consulting and coaching and can help you. With that as well. So if that's something you're interested in, you're ready to work together, uh, schedule a call. Let's chat. Reach out to me, ask me your questions and let's see if it's a good fit.'cause I'd love to help you too, whether you prefer to work in a group or one-on-one. Alright, that's it for today. I will be back here next Tuesday with another new episode. I hope that you have a fantastic day and do me a favor as you are winding up. If you haven't already left a review, you've done the rating, followed, subscribed, whatever it is on your platform of choice, please follow or subscribe and then do me that extra favor of leave the rating or the review because it really does help the algorithm. It really does make a difference. It's one quick little thing you can do to help me. To give me the encouragement to keep recording these podcasts for you each week so that you've got something new to listen to. I love seeing those come in because then it's like, oh, they really do like me. This really does make a difference. It really does help them. So if you wouldn't mind doing that, I would be so appreciative. Alright, you have a great day and I'll see you back here next week. Bye for now.