Are You Missing These SEO Basics?

Ben: Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Skylar. Skylar, welcome to the show.

Skylar: Hey Ben, thanks for having me.

Ben: Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. Really, we're kind of getting to the basics in this one and it's going to be kind of fun because I think sometimes people may not know all of these, especially talking to you, Skylar. You've kind of seen it a couple of times where people could use a reminder every now and then, and this will be a good one for them. Looking at it, before we dive into the subject though, Skylar, let's dive into your background. What do you love about marketing? Tell us about your career and a little bit about you so we can kind of get to know you and then we'll dive into the subject.

Skylar: Yeah, for sure. I have been in content creation, really on the creation side for the last 10 years of my career. I started out in an agency environment pretending to be a dentist and then jumped over to SaaS and technology and went from copywriter to copy editor to content manager. And that's kind of where I've been hanging out the last few years. And I really do love the creation side of it and being able to put the puzzle together of what do we need to create to meet our goal? And there's no one way to do it. And there are lots of new methods and tools and things available to do it. But it is just having that like really strong idea, but also the knowledge and skills to actually bring it to fruition. And that's what I love about marketing content. Yeah.

Getting Back to SEO Basics

Ben: Very cool, I love it, I love it. So for today's subject, we're going back to the basics, like we said. Content looks and feels and acts in different ways and shapes and forms. We use it all over the place, but sometimes we kind of forget about the little details to really optimize and do things. Skylar, what have you seen? What are some of those kind of tips that you would recommend? What are some things where people should really keep their eyes out when they produce content?

Skylar: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, and I've worked with big, massive 17 year old startups. I've worked with small businesses across industries. And it really is, everybody kind of wants to jump on that like next big thing or getting stressed about how do I use ChatGPT or AI, whatever it is. But then you dig in and you look at, you know, their website and the structure of how they put themselves out there and they're missing things like metadata. Or their H1 is trapped in a photograph or it's in a picture and it doesn't actually exist to any sort of crawler. And I look at those things and I think this is the origin story of your business. Like you need to be able to spot these little things. And it is the little details that, you know, people want to get their services pages out and they want to ask themselves questions about, do I need a blog? Do I need to be on Instagram? All these other things, but then their house is just not as in order as it could be to set themselves up for that consistent success when they want to do those bigger marketing projects. And that's something that I've just noticed across the board in every space. Metadata, how to link properly and use the right anchor text and how to direct your customer or your user from one part of your website into the next one in a way that makes sense and is natural. And that's...

Ben: I love that. Yeah, and I love the sentiment about really getting your house in order. A lot of times, and I've seen it time and time again with businesses, we'll create a website and the website is the core. Like, let's be honest, no matter what you write, what you promote, what event you attend, people will always look at your website before they ever interact with you. Like it's the final step in any process. And if it looks like garbage, if it doesn't explain things, if they can't find it, no matter what you've done, how much money you've spent, it doesn't really work. And it's so funny because we do these big site launches and then we forget about it. And then two years go by and we say, shoot, we need to create a new refresh and all that kind of stuff. So when it comes to making the website really productive, how do I think about it? Like what are some things that I can't forget to include? Like you talked about it specifically, how do I get people to go from one part of the website to another? How do you look at the user flow and make sure that it's functioning properly?

Look at it from your Customer's Perspective

Skylar: Yeah, I really start at like, what's your point? What do you actually want to be to your customer or to your whoever? And it can be difficult to wrap up in a few words or in a sentence, but that decision really leads everything else. And I'll just give the example of like a massage therapist, for example, if you want to be the best at like sports recovery from massage therapy, like that's your point. And if you're trying to bring in all these extra things in new services and trying to shove that into one space, then you've lost the point of what you are. And it'll be harder to create that meta description to write that H1 or whatever it is. And now things that I'm saying, if you're a really small business, you don't even know what those things are. So I worked with somebody who was very lovely, but they were like, you're saying things that I don't understand because that's not what I do. And I say, yeah, I know, that's what I'm here for. So if you're looking at that core concept and thinking about that homepage or whatever you're really trying to send to get people to that from that first initial reaction, it's where they need to go next. And it is the basics of how do I use my website to actually foster that journey through I've gotten them interested in Recovery from a sports injury through massage therapy so that means we need to make sure that it's easy for them to get to a service page that tells them more about the details of that service or a or a page a page to book how do they do that how do they get in contact with you and just really it's

And I'm a spooky girl like her, I love Halloween. So I think about like the web of creation. If your website or that web page is the centerpiece, where can somebody go to branch out and where does it lead them around the web, the web of their website? That's why they call it that. But that's really what I try to think of it. How do I get somebody from I don't know you to I wanna pay for your services? And there's a lot of different ways to do that, but guiding somebody through that web experience. Once they get, you know, X percent down that homepage, they have to be able to go somewhere else. Like you can't shove everything you are into that one space. You have to lead somebody, take their hand, guide them through, help them make a decision.

Ben: I love it. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And having the whole point of what are you trying to accomplish, right? Like sometimes websites will have so many call to actions, so many things, or sometimes they won't have any at all. Like you really do have to distill everything down to what is the one thing I'd like someone to do after visiting my site?

Learning SEO

Skylar: Yeah. And even like, you know, much bigger companies, and I had this conversation with a friend of mine who is in kind of freelance marketing for nonprofits. And the question we seem to always get from like the companies that we work for, the people we work with, is that they always want the marketing person to tell them like what their strategy is. And we always kind of have to struggle to put it back on them to say, but... I can't give you a strategy until you tell me what you want to accomplish. Like who do you want to be? Pick that one thing because I know at the end of the day, yeah, your goal is to get those bookings, fill that pipeline, make that money, same as everybody else. But if you can't tell me who you want to be to this person, then what I can say is the strategy isn't really gonna matter at the end of the day.

Ben: Yeah. So when you're talking about who you want to be, typically the way I look at that as your point of view, you know, potentially your unique point of view. When you're working with these groups, how do you help, you know, people find a unique point of view?

Skylar: Ooh, that's a really, that's a really tough question. I want to say it comes from the experience, right? You didn't wake up one day. I mean, you did, maybe you did wake up one day and said, I wanted to start a content podcast and create a way for businesses to catalog and generate and put out good content. But you knew that was an issue to begin with. So what brought you to that issue? And certainly for me, I mean, I think search plays a huge role in just figuring out like how do I align my experience with what somebody else is searching for? I hope that's a good answer.

Ben: Yeah, I love that. So, you know, you focus on your website, you know, where all activity is going to come back to. You have a unique point of view. You have a unique call to action of what you're actually trying to accomplish. And like we started out with, the basics, right? Including, you know, having your H1 tags be actual text.

Skylar: Yes.

Ben: Doing things just to make it easier on search engines, referring sites, things of that nature to make it easy for people to discover it. Like you said, if you're a small business, you may have no clue or you may not be like, shoot, like schema, what does that mean? Or metadata or whatever. What are some good resources besides just like working at a big business and learning from the people around you? Let's say you're not in that position.

SEO Tools

Skylar: Yeah, absolutely. And it's so funny because there are so many people I work with who are perfectionists in their niche or in whatever it is that they're selling. But then you look at their materials and it's like, you can't see the imperfections, but someone like me or someone in content marketing absolutely can. I think that's hilarious. But for me, it really is, okay, I'll just start with like tools, right? I mean, one of my go-to favorites for a long time has been the Moz. If you're looking at like your Wix site or your WordPress or whatever, and you don't really understand the finer details of like how to navigate to even find where you put your metadata or what it means to change a piece of text into your primary heading, downloading, just like download the Moz bar, put that extension on your Chrome browser, and then hit that button and it'll instantly show you like, all of these things are missing or cannot be detected. And that will that'll be your first indicator of an issue truly. So I love that I love really easy one. And it can be a little bit scary. But if you're going through your homepage, your website, whatever, whatever you're looking at, and you right click on an element, right, and it brings up the option to inspect it. And there's all this like code and things that like as a business owner, you might just be like, this makes me want to vomit. But you're looking for those little tags, you're looking for how does the back end, what does it say that this is? Does it say H1? Does it say H2? Does it just say nothing? Does it say paragraph? Like that will indicate to you on the back end, how technology is reading your content. And if it's missing those things, essentially it can't read it. I mean, and I think it's interesting that we assume that like...

technology and crawlers, these things are so smart and they are, but at the end of the day, we still have to tell them what we're doing. They can't find it on their own unless we point them exactly in the right direction. I think that goes for the crawlers you want to, you know, get your website to the top of that search for your niche, as well as your customers, right? Like if the two can't be read, you're missing out on huge opportunities. So that's... Those are a couple of things that I look for. Hit that inspect button, download that Moz bar, and then just talk to your friends, right? Like if you need somebody to book something, ask them to go through the whole process and then just have them make notes or even make notes yourself. If it's difficult to create an account, if your credit card information is not accepted, all of those things add a little bit of friction to the experience and they're gonna erode trust. And they're gonna make it harder for somebody to be convinced that they should work with you. And it's just gonna get in the way of making decisions easy, which is what we go to the internet for, very easy decisions.

Ben: I love that. I love that. I love how you're directly corresponding with people and directly asking, okay, how's this experience? How is this going? Again, the basics, like, doesn't matter if you have a novel, the piece of content that ranks number one on Google, if for some reason the book a demo form or fill out your credit card information doesn't work, you will never benefit from that because of it. And so I think there's a lot of cool stuff there.

Skylar: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it just, it's, it's, it's every little detail. Everything, everything is content and I really can't advocate for that enough. It's like, you want to, you want people to go to your webinar. Great. Wonderful. I want that for you too. But if you made your registration page, but then your thank you for registering, we're going to reach out to you with more information has the name of the last webinar that you did or has the wrong date on it. Like. All of those details are going to confuse somebody and they're going to prevent them from coming back. Like it has to be, it has to be obvious.

Ben: I love that. So it sounds like really at the end of the day, spend more time putting yourself in your customer's shoes and go through the experience. And if something's confusing, go fix it. If it, you know, and your customer, while they may not be buying from you is also search engines and ranking sites where go through it in the inspect element or Moz toolbar or whatever it may be. See what they can see and see how to make that experience better as well. Cause ultimately good SEO is making life good on or easy for Google. And the same thing goes for marketing. The good marketing makes life easy on the person who's buying from you. Same with the search engine, same with everyone around you. So I love it. Like the basics are the, like those ease of use. Yeah.

Skylar: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is. You can have the best product. You can look at whatever you're producing and say, like, I can see all these deep flaws in it. But then someone like me or one of my colleagues comes in and say, hold on, you're trying to fix a problem that somebody can't even get to because they're hung up on your website. The experience isn't great. They don't know what they're searching for. They don't know how to get there. And you're just making it harder for them every single step.

Ben: Mm -hmm.

Skylar: The way. And I've even you know, I've worked with, you know, companies that have been around for a long time, who have these marketing teams, and they have these grandiose ideas that we're gonna replace all these web pages, and we're gonna change our position and all those things. But then it's that basic thing of, well, hold on, you can't just remake that page, you already have a page like that, you need to build on that page. Or you're going to give yourself a huge pile of redirects and if you're a small business, you might be like, what is all that stuff? But it's just, it's going to just clutter up your site. It's gonna give you too many pages, too much margin for error. So yeah, you just, you kinda, you gotta go back to those simple, simple steps and it helps if you can set yourself up from success in the beginning. I know that's not realistic for everybody. But working with somebody who knows what they're doing, like they can spot those things and they can fix them. And it's really just going to set you on that path to success with that more complicated thing that you want to do.

Ben: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, Skylar, as promised, these episodes go by quickly. I have learned a ton. I love it. I love going back to the basics and focusing on that and the ease of use of everything. If anyone wants to reach out and continue the conversation online with you, how can they find you? Where do they go?

Skylar: Yeah, absolutely. I stood up my own website. So go ahead and check me on my own, in my own stuff. But you can reach me at skylardoscontent .com or on Instagram at skylardoscontent. That is what I do. You can also find me on LinkedIn. All the pictures are the same. First name Skylar, last name Barsanti, super Italian. But yeah, at skylardoscontent, skylardoscontent .com.

Ben: Love it, love it, and we'll link to everything in the show notes. Skylar, again, thanks so much for your time today. Appreciate it.

Skylar: Yeah, thank you. This is awesome.

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