When most small business owners think of SEO, they think of daunting, boring, back-end website work that isn't the most exciting... but the truth is, there's more to SEO and when it's done right, it will help you to get your products in front of even more people who are searching on places like Google.
Even better, it's NOT boring OR daunting, especially when you learn how to do it the right way from SEO experts themselves... which is exactly why I invited Abbey & Courtney, SEO and marketing experts, to share how you can easily optimize your SEO to get in front of more people to get more sales for your small business!
Abbey & Courtney are both co-founders and business besties of Duo Collective, a boutique organic marketing agency specializing in social media strategy, branding, SEO, and coaching for small business owners and multi-passionate entrepreneurs. They are obsessed with finding ways to help you grow organically without needing to spend a DIME on paid ads.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
LINKS MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
Follow Abbey and Courtney on Instagram: @duo.collective
Listen to the Duo On Air Marketing Podcast
Find your SEO keywords with their free resource: 4 Free Ways to Find SEO Keywords
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
When most small business owners think of SEO, they think of daunting, boring, back-end website work that isn't the most exciting... but the truth is, there's more to SEO and when it's done right, it will help you to get your products in front of even more people who are searching on places like Google.
Even better, it's NOT boring OR daunting, especially when you learn how to do it the right way from SEO experts themselves... which is exactly why I invited Abbey & Courtney, SEO and marketing experts, to share how you can easily optimize your SEO to get in front of more people to get more sales for your small business!
Abbey & Courtney are both co-founders and business besties of Duo Collective, a boutique organic marketing agency specializing in social media strategy, branding, SEO, and coaching for small business owners and multi-passionate entrepreneurs. They are obsessed with finding ways to help you grow organically without needing to spend a DIME on paid ads.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
LINKS MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
Follow Abbey and Courtney on Instagram: @duo.collective
Listen to the Duo On Air Marketing Podcast
Find your SEO keywords with their free resource: 4 Free Ways to Find SEO Keywords
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
[00:00:00] Monica Little: Hello and welcome to episode number 34 of the product of this podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to Abby and Courtney from Duo Collective. Duo Collective is an agency ran by Abby and Courtney, where they specialize in organic marketing, so they help business owners with branding, social media and s e.
[00:00:21] They used to work in the corporate world for an agency, left there and decided to open up their own agency from their passion and experience in organic market. This is such an awesome conversation that I can't wait for you to dive into because you're gonna hear us talk not only about seo, and I know a lot of people when they hear seo, they may breeze past this episode because it sounds overwhelming, it sounds daunting, but this is a fun conversation.
[00:00:44] We talk about seo, we talk about blogs, we talk about how to get in front of more customers. We talk about how to repurpose content on Instagram, your email list, so many different ways and how to. Create the results that you want in your [00:01:00] business. I'm so excited to introduce you to Abby and Courtney today, and I can't wait to hear what you think of this week's episode of the Product Biz podcast.
[00:01:09] Are you ready to go behind the scenes and learn what it really takes to create consistent sales each and every month with your handmade small? Join me, Monica, little Self-taught multiple six figure small business owner and your product business coach. As I give you the insight and inspiration on how to better run your business and increase your sales in ways that you may not have even been aware of, so that your business can truly become
[00:01:38] Abbey: what you knew it could be back when you first.
[00:01:42] Monica Little: Learn how to let go of perfection, overcome the fear of failure that is holding you back, and finally start taking action so that you walk away feeling like you've cracked the code on how to run a successful small business. You are listening to the Product Biz Podcast. [00:02:00] Well, thank you so much Abby and Courtney.
[00:02:03] I'm so excited to have you both on the Product Bus podcast to talk all about SEO and how product business owners can use SEO to grow their business today.
[00:02:12] Abbey: Yeah, thanks
[00:02:13] Monica Little: for having us. Yes, so, so excited. I know we met at U ppp, the ultimate product Party last year, and you both had an amazing presentation about S E O and just how product business owners can use s e O.
[00:02:28] And for me, it was something that I knew about but never really implemented. I knew it was important, but it's not like the funnest thing sometimes to talk about, but you guys made it so fun. So I knew I had to ask both of you to come on the podcast and talk about it, cuz I love how you make it something that's actually really exciting and interesting and something super valuable for people to use.
[00:02:49] But before we dive in to SEO o, what is SEO o? All of the good stuff that SEO can bring, I would love for you both just to introduce yourselves, so who is listening gets [00:03:00] to know a little bit more about your back.
[00:03:02] Abbey: Yeah, sure. I can start. So I'm Abby. I am the seo, an analytical, one of the group of the duo. So I am usually the one that likes to play more in Excel and all of the SEO tools and courts like, get me out of here
[00:03:19] Um, and I make her painfully listen to some of, or show her by walkthroughs. Right. . Um, but yeah, we together started this business about three and a half years ago. Um, we worked together at our old. Um, on marketing and the very same capacity that we brought to this business today. So it works really well and.
[00:03:39] We've since, I would say at the very beginning of our business, we kind of were like, okay, marketing, like we've done marketing in our agency, we're gonna do marketing in any capacity, like whatever people need. And we slowly found out that so many people think of marketing as a paid. Thing, like you have to pay for it.
[00:03:56] Mm-hmm. to make it work. And so we saw a huge [00:04:00] opportunity for this. Like, you can market your business without paying anything for ads. And there's so much you can do, not only just from s e o and social, but from having a solid brand. So, um, we really kind of focused in on that organic space, and that's kind of where we thrive now.
[00:04:16] Oh gosh,
[00:04:16] Courtney: yes. And I'm Courtney. I am the creative side of the duo. Uh, like Abby said, I do not work in Excel or any of those things, . And um, like Abby also said, she's the SEO genius of us too. Um, I know enough to be dangerous with it, but she's definitely the one that you'll probably hear more from today.
[00:04:34] But yeah, so I work on a lot of the branding we, like Abby said, we work on social media strategy too, so I have my hands in a lot of that, but I dabble in SEL a little bit here and there. But Abby has definitely taught me a lot of things along the way too. And I would say the best thing about how she teaches it and how we've teach it to, um, anybody out there or worked with our clients is that we try to make it.
[00:04:56] And not as scary. I think that people look at SEO and [00:05:00] they're like, oh my gosh. It's this big, daunting, scary thing. And we don't want it to be like that for everybody. We want it to be fun, exciting, and show how beneficial it
[00:05:08] Abbey: is for you. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And court has an act for making SEO look pretty too.
[00:05:13] Like that's something where I think the very first time we audited a website, I did it in Excel and I sent it to her and I was like, here's like a report card. Like what do you think? What should we do? And she's like, no, absolutely not. like built something beautiful in Canva that's gorgeous. So it like makes SEO so much more fun to look at when you're seeing it in a beautiful template.
[00:05:33] Courtney: And I think it's fun for the clients to see it that way too. They're like, oh, this is like SEO's kind of like actually physically sexy.
[00:05:39] Abbey: Mm-hmm. . So .
[00:05:40] Monica Little: Yeah. And that's what I felt at the ultimate product party at your table talking about seo, just to paint the picture for the person listening, you guys put it into this fun like Las Vegas casino theme and you were all decked out in sequence and glitter and it was, it's, it's such a testament to exactly what you both just said of how [00:06:00] to turn it around and make it fun.
[00:06:01] Because from my perspective at least, and I'm sure other people listening, when you hear seo, the first thing you think of is daunting, right? Like, oh my gosh, I know it's like keywords and titling your images, and that sounds a little daunting to me, but. Hearing both of your perspectives of the right brain and the left brain, the analytical and the fun, and how you bring that together to talk about s e o, I think that is just such a breath of fresh air for something that can be really, really hard for a lot of business owners.
[00:06:29] But I would love to know, as we talk about s e o and have said it a couple times, what is s e o? So imagine someone who's listening maybe. Heard of SEO, but don't really know what it is. They've seen it here and there, but haven't dived in, dived in. How would you explain SEO and the benefits of SEO to someone who's brand new?
[00:06:49] Yeah, so SEO is really
[00:06:51] Abbey: just the practice of optimizing op and optimizing, again, can be like a scary jargon filled word, but it's basically just the [00:07:00] practice of refining or updating your website to make sure that search engines can understand it. So search engines like Google, um, bang, Yahoo. Like all of them.
[00:07:11] It's overall, how can. Build your website so that search engines can see it, find it, and serve you when people are searching for you.
[00:07:19] Monica Little: Yeah, I love that. And when I think about it too, so just to maybe put it in a perspective of someone who's on Google, if there's a customer on Google typing in, and I'm gonna give my example for plant-based beauty, organic facial serum.
[00:07:33] If your s e o is on point, then essentially when someone types it in into Google, you would rise up higher on the search results page. Is that how it works? Or talk me through that scenario. Yeah, so
[00:07:44] Abbey: basically you would be indexed. So indexing is, we like to think of it as like a big filing cabinet. Like Google is just a really big filing cabinet, and they have all of these different folders.
[00:07:55] And all the folders are the keywords or the search terms that people are searching for. If [00:08:00] you have those keywords on your website, then your website is plugged into that folder and then you have the opportunity to appear. But, um, a lot of times, like sometimes you'll index, so you'll be showing in that folder, but you'll be on page.
[00:08:13] So you don't drive traffic because you're too far back there. And so then there's other things that we always like to walk people through to like, okay. First Google knows you're there because the number one problem is a lot of times people aren't even in the folder. They're not in the folder at all, so it's like you don't even have the option to show up.
[00:08:29] So the first part is fixing that, and then once you're in the folder, then it's like, what else can I do to help move my website up in the ranks, essentially to get up higher. And higher because the earlier pages you get to, the better chances you are to drive traffic. Which actually something brand new that just happened too, um, recently is Google removed the whole button to click more.
[00:08:53] So you know how you would get to the bottom of search page? You'd have to go to page two, page three, page four. Now you can scroll on both desktop and mobile [00:09:00] for up to six pages until it says, So basically if you are any like position one through 60 or on page one through six, then you kind of just made page one.
[00:09:11] Cuz people can just scroll the whole time. . Yeah. And I
[00:09:14] Monica Little: think now we're in such a world where people just scroll, scroll, scroll. Mm-hmm. . So hey, if you are jump Yeah. And it's still actually really beneficial. Yeah. Yes, yes. But I love what you were saying about you have to be in the folder first, and then you'll get displayed on Google and Bank and other search engines.
[00:09:33] And this is such a good topic of conversation because the biggest hurdle for product business owners is getting in front of more people, right? Mm-hmm. . and how do we get in front of more people on social media? How do we get new followers? How do we get in front of people on Etsy to get people to actually see your shop when they're searching?
[00:09:49] How do you get more eyeballs on your website from Google? So it's so important to mm-hmm. have. Your products, your website, show up in all these different [00:10:00] components. Cuz that's the hardest thing, right? Yeah. And there's a quote by Nike that I always tell my clients, and I think it's something like, you can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, what good is that?
[00:10:09] Right? Mm-hmm. , because you have to be showing up on Google for people to actually stumble upon and find you. So this is why I think SEO gets. Super fun and interesting because there's so much potential with it. One thing I wanted to dive into, cuz you mentioned it's like a filing cabinet, right? And first you have to be in the folder, but you mentioned a lot of people aren't in the folder.
[00:10:29] So what does that mean? How are people not using s e o or what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see product business owners have when first diving into
[00:10:40] Abbey: seo? . Yeah. So one, in order to be in the folder, you need to have words on your website. Mm-hmm. . Um, if you don't have enough copy and content on your website, and if you don't have the actual words that people are searching for in Google to find you, then you're not gonna get filed appropriately.
[00:10:57] So that is, um, [00:11:00] Most important, you just need to have enough content. And I'd say if you're struggling, especially with like where or how much content to include, look at your competition or type the keywords that your customers are, might be using. See who else is on that page. What types of content do they have on their page.
[00:11:16] Cuz I know copywriting can be a really big struggle, especially if you're DIYing it. Just looking at who lives on that first page at the beginning can really be helpful so that then you can use that as a guide so you know how to structure your content. Um, and then the second thing that I think people forget about is Google Search Console.
[00:11:35] So that is a tool that's completely free. Everyone should have it along with Google Analytics. But Google Search Console is specific to how your website performs on search. So it connects the setup. Is it? It can seem daunting cause there's big words in there, like d n s settings and like updating things with your domain.
[00:11:53] But there are so many like YouTube videos showcasing you how to do it and you can easily just be like, [00:12:00] how to set up my um, Google search console. GoDaddy with name cheap, with Wix, with whatever Shopify, like whatever system you use, wherever you bought your URL from is how you'll set it up. And then it will tell you, like if you click on pages, it just tells you right there, here's the pages that are indexed.
[00:12:19] Here's the pages that are not indexed. And if they're not indexed, you can ask them to be indexed, which is great. That's the first step. Or you can see what the error is and you can see like, okay, what's the issue? That's one of the things that usually when we have our client discovery calls, they're like, I'm just not driving any traffic.
[00:12:36] Like no one's coming to my website. And I usually say, it's not your fault. Google doesn't know about you. Like that's problem number one. We need to make sure that you can get found first, and once Google knows about you, you will start driving traffic.
[00:12:48] Monica Little: Yeah, and there's a couple things I wrote down. So it sounds like, number one, making sure you are indexed, right?
[00:12:54] Mm-hmm. , so using Google Search Console for that. And I heard you say if it says that your [00:13:00] website or your pages aren't indexed and what that means is not showing up, Google's not even registered. You're not in the file. Not in the file cabinet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So making sure you use Google Search Console to make sure you are index.
[00:13:13] Then, um, it's not even that because checking to see if there's any errors, and you said Google Search Console will also tell you if there are errors, right? So they're letting you know, Hey, you're not in the file cabinet because X, Y, Z fix this. So once you have some of those more foundational pieces, then the main driver, and let me know if I'm correct in paraphrasing, is the words that you use on your.
[00:13:37] Right?
[00:13:37] Abbey: Mm-hmm. . Yep. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you kind of wanna make sure the words are there first, because then you'll request that like crawl, which is what it's called, it's basically a bunch of robots in the back of your computer crawling your website so Google can file you. Um, so. If you hear the word crawl or indexing, that's essentially what we're talking about.
[00:13:57] But it's um, once you have [00:14:00] the words on there and you feel good about it, and even like if you make updates to your website, you can go into Google Search Console and tell Google to manually go crawl it again cuz you made some updates. Mm-hmm. . So this happens a lot, especially if people have very.
[00:14:14] Seasonal businesses or if they update their products based on like holidays, like they have a whole new category and selection, like making sure that stuff gets indexed right away is so important because if you just wait for Google to find it on its own, it could take way longer. And that time missed is opportunities where you could.
[00:14:32] Boost up in the rankings or people could find you and actually shop you. So it's so important to kind of just use that tool to help index your content even faster. Yeah,
[00:14:42] Monica Little: I love
[00:14:42] Courtney: it. And Abby, correct me if I'm wrong, but is it 300 words on each page that you should at least be aiming for? For Yeah, Google to be able to like crawl that particular page.
[00:14:51] Abbey: Yeah, that's kind of like a rule that was set and made by Yost, which Yost is a genius when it comes to that C space. So they're, they know what they're talking about. Um, so [00:15:00] they made this rule of kind of like 300 words to make sure that you get enough content. And there's a lot of times where, especially in for product businesses, is people forget about product descriptions.
[00:15:11] How lengthy are they? Is there enough words there or do you just have two sentences? Because if you don't have at least 300 words, chances are Google can't file you correctly and understand like what you're talking about. And then the other pages are category pages. So category pages are like if you have a holiday category, if you have like a shoes category, women category, whatever it may be.
[00:15:33] um, those category pages also have the option to rank on their own. Mm-hmm. . So those pages, adding a headline and a little description of like, what is included in this category can help those individual pages appear higher on search engines.
[00:15:47] Monica Little: Ooh, I love that. That's a really good tip. Yeah. What about your homepage two?
[00:15:50] Is that something that should also have 300 words? Because that could essentially be indexed and show up on Google when people search too, right? Yeah,
[00:15:57] Abbey: absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. [00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Courtney: I think another one too that's fun to talk about is the contact page. Everybody gets hung up on the contact page. They're like, I don't know what to say.
[00:16:06] Like, so I think one thing that we always suggest is like, you can talk about you a little bit. You can like talk at the, you can repurpose that about you section that you might already have on your website and then FAQs. I think people, a lot of people often forget that FAQs could live in this space. Um, and especially with product-based businesses, I'm sure there's a ton of fa.
[00:16:24] So you can fill in that, that content there with those FAQs and have that be part of that content that makes up that contact page.
[00:16:31] Monica Little: Yeah. And not only is it providing content for Google, but also providing content for your customer. So you're hitting two birth with one stone, right. If I need to be more.
[00:16:42] Descriptive in my product description in order for Google to actually search my page and show me to customers who are on Google searching for X, Y, Z term. I need to have more words in my practice description. But then when a customer lands on that page, if it's from Instagram or if it's from Google or wherever, they're gonna have more context [00:17:00] to actually know what they're buying and feel confident in their purchase decision.
[00:17:05] So it's really a great, it's like something that people should be doing anyways. And then there's this additional benefit of making. Google is indexed properly in the filing cabinet. All that fun stuff to get even more juice out of the squeeze, right? Mm-hmm. ,
[00:17:18] Abbey: yeah. Mm-hmm. . And if you don't know, like the questions that people are asking, there's this section in Google called people also ask, we don't think about it from a business standpoint, but it's such a cool section because if you were searching for a keyword or a category or something related to what you have to offer, Google literally tells you in this section what else people are asking.
[00:17:38] And if those are questions you can answer. With FAQs or just answer them in a blog post or answer them in your product description. It's things people are searching for, so it's more opportunities to P for people to find you. So that section is kind of gold.
[00:17:52] Monica Little: And is that in Google Search Console or where is that?
[00:17:54] Just Google. You just
[00:17:56] Abbey: do it. Yeah. Google's like literally giving you the answers right there, which is awesome. So if you just go [00:18:00] into Google and search for it, and then you'll see this section, it's maybe like pa, it's right when you scroll past the ads, you maybe see a couple. And then there's a, people also ask, and it's just like a dropdown.
[00:18:10] And the more you click on it, engage with it, the more questions it'll start populating. So you can get more granular into like what's specific for you. Got
[00:18:19] Monica Little: it. Got it. So this is in the situation of someone typing in some keywords on Google and then seeing what else comes up. Mm-hmm. in that section using that.
[00:18:27] Yeah. So it's like reverse engineering it a little bit. It's kinda sneaky, but yeah,
[00:18:32] Abbey: I know. But there's so much, and then a lot of times people don't have like, Keyword search tools, like they don't wanna use or pay for a tool. Um, and if that's the case, like you can still do that. You won't know like how often that question is searched.
[00:18:45] It might not have a high search volume, but that doesn't mean that it's still not answering a very like niche person's question that could help. Drive more people or that niche into your, into your offerings.
[00:18:55] Monica Little: Yeah, a hundred percent. And one thing that I found really beneficial for plant-based beauty, [00:19:00] which Courtney you had just mentioned too and, and then ambi you mentioned as well, is the blog side of things.
[00:19:04] So I do have Google Search Console set up. I'm gonna be honest that I get the monthly email. Saying like, here are your stats. And that's like the gist of it. Right. I haven't really done, I mean, that's the funnest
[00:19:16] Abbey: email though, like Yeah, sure. Seeing, seeing growth, and especially when you see growth too, you're like, oh, okay.
[00:19:21] Like a little bit of what I'm doing is working, which makes me feel
[00:19:23] Monica Little: really good. Yeah. But it's super interesting to see where people are going and what people are actually searching. Where my business is showing up, and a lot of what I see is specifically. Blog posts. So I have, for example, just to give context to you both and who's listening, um, a cystic acne set for people who are struggling with cystic acne, hormonal acne.
[00:19:44] And I have a ton of blog posts about what is cystic acne, what's beneficial, how to care for it, what not to do, and those are the ones that always come up on that Google search console. . So I think that shows how much potential there is to [00:20:00] understand what, like you just said, what questions are your customers asking?
[00:20:03] How can you serve them, how can you provide context to it? And then in that blog post, link your products too. Mm-hmm. . So not only are you getting people from Google, you're educating them now they trust you and now you hit them with your product that you're just getting more exposure and and educating people.
[00:20:18] So talk me through a little bit more on the blog side. Is that something you'd really recommend for people on seo? Is it. To have, what's the dynamic with blogs?
[00:20:28] Abbey: Always, always recommend it . Um, we just had to convince someone. One of our clients the other day, we didn't have to convince 'em very hard, but we did have to convince them.
[00:20:37] I was like, are you planning on doing a blog? And they're like, no. Like, blogs are, blogs are out. And I'm like, no, no, they're not. Like vlogs are that opportunity for you to answer questions. Use those keywords that don't make sense on your website, because there's lots of times where, especially if you are in a business like you are, where you are helping solve so many products with [00:21:00] these plant-based beauty products.
[00:21:01] Like you're helping to solve all of these problems that people are searching for, but you're not just gonna go into product description and list out all the problems that people like it might work for, because that might not speak naturally. To someone who's reading it. Um, but you can answer those problems and the solu and be the solution that people are searching for, uh, with blog posts.
[00:21:24] So it just kind of opens the door to different avenues of ways people can find you. Because a lot of times if you are just using your website, you are expecting that your audience is, knows about the solution that you have to. You're expecting that they already know about the thing you have to sell, and in so many cases, they don't know that you exist yet because there's so many amazing products out there that people don't even know how to search for it because they don't know that you exist.
[00:21:53] So you have to. Like make that awareness and come to play. And the only way you do that is through [00:22:00] education, through creating content with your blog.
[00:22:02] Monica Little: Yeah, and I think this gets into a very interesting discussion too, because as we're creating blog content, I mean, that's social media content. Mm-hmm. , and that's repurposing it across the board, so it's not, yeah.
[00:22:13] Another, it's, it is another example of the work that goes into really showing up on Google and really leveraging s e o is work that is gonna help you across so many different avenues and can be repurposed. So it's not this mm-hmm. bogged down work for one thing. You know? It's like, wow, this is great.
[00:22:32] This is helping me. in social media in my email list can get this blog post. I'm educating people. So it's really an overall encompassing business strategy, not just rules. It's gonna help you grow across all your other platforms too, if
[00:22:47] Abbey: you use it. Absolutely. Yeah, long phone content is the best to like bitesize break into chunks.
[00:22:53] Like you can take one blog post, one paragraph of a blog post and make that an Instagram post, and you [00:23:00] can take that and you can record a video of you talking on TikTok about that post. You can take that and then put that in an email or a podcast like We've done that so many times where we have podcast episodes that are repurposed blogs or.
[00:23:13] There's different things that we've just taken nuggets from it that we've like taken and referenced. So it's such a powerful tool and it's like the best, it's like the top of the tier, I'd say. Like when it comes to repurposing, blogging's the top, because then you can just reuse it everywhere else. Yeah.
[00:23:31] And I think
[00:23:31] Courtney: that's where a lot of customers or clients and customers and people out there, that's where they, what they forget. They don't realize that. I think they think you write a blog and if it doesn't perform, then that blog is dead. And then what's the point? And they kind of get into that frame of just like, well, it didn't work, so why would I do that again?
[00:23:47] And you know, some blogs might not work and that's okay, but others will definitely work. And the ones that maybe don't work, maybe you take that content and you put it on social or you put it on TikTok and or Pinterest or whatever, and it can blow. So you never, you never [00:24:00] know. You just have to be smart with that repurposing strategy and taking that blog and putting it
[00:24:05] Monica Little: every.
[00:24:06] Yeah, a hundred percent. And one thing I always like to tell people is whenever you're doing something, you should be able to repurpose it in at least three ways. And if you can't, then it's like, Ugh. Is this really something that you should be working on? Right? Mm-hmm. . So when we talk about a blog, okay, s e o, Instagram, TikTok reels email marketing.
[00:24:25] it's a no-brainer. Mm-hmm. . So, of course, exactly like you said, if the blog doesn't get a lot of comments or if it doesn't do good against whatever measure we wanna do, we're still able to repurpose and have some structure and have a plan. So we're not showing up on social media every day. Like, what do I talk about?
[00:24:41] Oh, well, okay, let's go back to the blogs and let's see what we can pull from there and, and make running a business. On us, right? Yeah.
[00:24:48] Abbey: And I think too, like old, so just like we were talking about, so if a piece of content doesn't work, that doesn't mean it has to be dead either. Like actually a lot of times, so say for [00:25:00] right now, you've been writing blogs, but you haven't been thinking about them from an SEO perspective.
[00:25:04] So you have all of this old blog content out there rather than forget it. Go back to it and make it better. So don't just start creating new SEO optimized blog posts. Now go back to those posts. Maybe you didn't have the right keyword search for. Example keyboards. Use the people Ask SEC section to add sections into those old blog posts that will help be more relevant to that topic and then republish it because re republishing content and refreshing content like that is also a strategy Google really likes.
[00:25:38] So it's not just about creating new, but it's about like updating the old too and making it more relevant and timely because there's so. Junk out there on the web like so much. And Google doesn't want that junk out there. So they're things that are outdated and old they're not gonna show. So if you are continuing to refresh your content and think about like your content, [00:26:00] not just as like a post-it and done, it's not like Instagram where it's like so far down on your feed, you're never gonna see it again.
[00:26:06] This is your content that can drive traffic for you even if you created it five years ago. If you're dedicated to continuing to update it moving
[00:26:13] Monica Little: forward. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened to me with a cystic acne blog. It's been thriving and living on for probably like three years. But the funny thing is there's so many other blog posts that I put out and they aren't showing up on Google Search Console or not really getting a lot of traction, but part of it is just sometimes you don't know until you do it, and it's.
[00:26:34] Putting those things out there and like you said, going back and making enhancements to see what can really be done in a better way. Yeah, and I love what you said because it's basically being super, super intentional. Cuz sometimes I see, I know some people do do blogs and there should be that intent behind it of, okay, let me see what questions are coming up on Google.
[00:26:54] I'll let me address those. Instead of just throwing spaghetti at the wall saying, well hopefully people wanna read [00:27:00] about this and this, and. Versus actually having some sort of context as to why are you writing this blog post? Who are you serving? What questions do they have and, and how are you going to help them?
[00:27:11] So I'd love to hear how both of you had said, how it's being super intentional and putting more structure in in the business side of things.
[00:27:20] Abbey: Yeah, I think, um, it, it's more, it needs to be more known now that that's the case because with everything coming out, with all of like the AI writing tools, people are like, well, I don't need to hire a blog writer.
[00:27:33] Like, I, I don't need a human to do this anymore. I can just have a robot write a blog post for me and I can publish it. Um, and the quality as you can imagine, of the content that's gonna start being pushed out is going to be really poor. Mm-hmm. , like, it's not going to be quality content. People are just going to create content just to create, and I think this is true across any platform.
[00:27:55] You don't create just to create, like you create with purpose. And if you're not [00:28:00] creating with purpose, you're not gonna see results behind it. So that's something where blogging is the same way. Like create it with a purpose and don't think about the fact that like maybe no one will read it, because if you are creating it, For someone that you know needs it and to read it, it will be seen, and then you can post it and optimize it more to make sure that it's seen by more people.
[00:28:21] So nothing is ever lost when it's created with purpose either.
[00:28:25] Monica Little: Yeah, and that is such a. Unique way of looking at things that I don't think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people struggle with, Ugh, like, I have to do this. Let me just get it done. Let me cross it off my list. Let me move on to the next thing.
[00:28:39] But when you're building a business and it's something that's gonna be a legacy that you wanna be working on your business for the next 10, 20, 30 years, you want your kids to take it over when they're older, whatever it may be. It's like man, sitting down with that intention and that long-term vision and saying, What I'm writing about matters.
[00:28:57] What I'm putting together here matters for whoever's gonna [00:29:00] read it. It's not just something I'm gonna cross off and half-ass and move on to the next thing. But I think there's a very big distinction between the type of business owners that are out there. You see people who are intentional and who sit down in that mindset.
[00:29:13] But then you see people on the flip side, and sometimes I get stuck in this mindset of like, lemme just get it done. Let me just get it done. And at the end of the week I'm like, okay, I, I get that. I'm getting things done. Am I'm gonna have to come back and redo this. Did I really give it in my all? Did I really sit down and think through, why am I doing this?
[00:29:28] Who am I serving? Who's gonna read it? So I think that's something that hopefully the person listening is like, okay, this is gonna give me a little bit more structure and confidence in my business with that longer term vision and planning with purpose and attention.
[00:29:43] Courtney: Absolutely. Yeah. I think too, like structuring it like that makes it more fun because you are answering those questions and you start to like slowly get passionate.
[00:29:51] You're very passionate about your business, but let's say you aren't passionate about blogging. But when you structure it like that and you sit down and you are really diving deep into who you're helping, what you're [00:30:00] solving, what your product does for them, um, and what they're gonna get out of it, then that makes it more exciting.
[00:30:05] Versus just having this mindset of like, oh, it's just another thing I have to do. Change your mindset to like that more strategic side of it and get really excited about it because you are helping people at the end of the day with your product by solving their question or solving their problems, answering their questions.
[00:30:21] So I think a lot of it is really just that mindset, kind of like you were talking about.
[00:30:25] Monica Little: Yeah. And that's something I hear a lot from people. Like, oh, I have to do this, I have to do this. And I always tell people, well, instead of saying I have to do this, you get to do this. Right, exactly. Running your own business.
[00:30:37] An awesome thing that we get to do and you know, you don't have to do anything, but you get
[00:30:42] Abbey: to, yeah, that was the whole point of starting businesses, right? So that you don't have to do it. But yeah, we put all of this like big pressure on us to post a certain number of times or to do all of these things.
[00:30:55] And I do this all the time where I'm like, is this deadline that we set for [00:31:00] ourselves. Why did we set it? Is it okay to move? Like, what, who's putting this pressure on us? And it's always us, like it's, uh, our internalness that is like putting the pressure on ourselves to do something. And sometimes it's like not, it's not going to be that important.
[00:31:15] So hopefully at least of. Everything we're talking about, cuz I know it's gonna be like, oh, I don't know. S e o. And I'm like, I have to like optimize all of my stuff now and I have more to add to my to-do list because essentially that's what we're talking about right now, right? is like all the additional things you can add to your to-do list.
[00:31:30] It's also about like prioritizing. Like you don't have to do everything nor should you. And if you're not hiring help, then you have to prioritize. Like you have to decide. And we always say one or. , you pick one or two platforms because you, as a single human being running a business, that's all you have time for.
[00:31:48] And if you're trying to be everywhere and do everything, you're going to see very minimal growth because you're spreading yourself too thin. So we're, if blogging is one of those priorities, great, and Instagram is the [00:32:00] other, then that's it. You stick there. You're not gonna explore Pinterest right now, like you're gonna wait until you can afford to hire someone, but give it your all on the platforms that you can priorit.
[00:32:09] And by
[00:32:09] Courtney: doing that, you're able to be more consistent. Like you'll hear Abby and I throw around the word consistency all the time, and consistency is what is going to help you here. Like we've had people say that, you know, they're like, well, I wrote a blog a couple of months ago and then I wrote one this week, and then I wrote one, two weeks later.
[00:32:25] And it's like, that's great, but you need to have a consistent schedule with that because otherwise it's not gonna slowly grow for you. So really, Picking those priorities, being very consistent and intentional with them. And then once you have those down, you can slowly start to add on if you feel comfortable
[00:32:41] Monica Little: doing so.
[00:32:42] Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. And that's something that I tell my clients all the time. I heard this interesting quote last week. It was something along the lines of, instead of going wide with your business, you wanna go deep. And so many people wanna go wide. They wanna make all these different products, they wanna be all these different [00:33:00] platforms, they wanna do all these different projects.
[00:33:02] But if you go. On one or two platforms, Abby, like you just said, if you're consistent like you just said, and you go deep, that's gonna be the game changer. And that's something I tell my clients all the time when we talk about projects. I'm like, focus on one project per month. You know, if you're really gonna focus on s e o, do it for the next month.
[00:33:21] Get the foundations, the fundamentals, what you need down. And then obviously there's gonna be some consistent. Like blog posts that you're still gonna have to turn out, but spend a month, spend two months on that one platform and really master it instead of trying to master a hundred different things at a hundred different times.
[00:33:38] You know, that's how we get overwhelmed and how essentially we get burned out and then nothing gets done. So yeah, I always love when other people come on the podcast and. Say the same things cuz I'm like, this is it. You know, this is what really sets people apart and you start to see similarities across different coaches and different people that you talk with on how to really make an impact with your business.
[00:33:59] [00:34:00] So I'm, I'm just grateful to have that reinforced and both your perspectives on it cuz it's, it's super impactful. Yes, absolutely. Cool. Okay, so I wanna summarize a couple things. When we talk about getting started with S E O, I wrote down four things. So number one, Google Search Console. Number two, have 300 words on your pages so Google can actually go through your words and put you in that file cabinet and make sure you're showing up.
[00:34:27] a blog is a number three. An awesome tool to have, not only for s e o, but to repurpose across your platforms. And then, and this kind of is along the way of all of them, right? But really utilizing Google and going and doing searches to see what are keywords that people use. Mm-hmm. . So those are some amazing tips.
[00:34:46] I do wanna ask if there are any, Top three, uh, top tips for getting started on SEO or anything else that you would wanna share with people who are diving into this SEO O project. [00:35:00]
[00:35:00] Abbey: Yeah. Um, I would say so when you are putting a co a couple things, I'll give you two of 'em. When you are putting, um, words on your website, uh, headlines you should prioritize for like the really big keywords that you wanna be found.
[00:35:14] So when you think about, um, your website, Google reads it very much like a book report. Like your top headline is the title of that book. That's the most important thing. And then as you have smaller headlines going throughout your page, you're giving them the chapters of the book in your paragraph as the meet.
[00:35:29] So making sure that you are prioritizing keywords and headlines is super important. Don't just like squeeze some keywords somewhere because that's one that's called keyword stuffing and it doesn't work very well. But um, Where to put those keywords definitely matters. So prioritizing headlines is important.
[00:35:48] And then I'd say if you don't know what an SEO title and a meta description are, I highly recommend you look them up. Um, there are, so, like if you just look up SEO title, meta description [00:36:00] in Shopify, you can find a billion YouTube tutorial showing you where they are. These are ha this is what your website looks like on.
[00:36:09] And I see this all the time where people do just their brand name for their homepage. So it's just your brand name and there's it. There's no complimenting keyword with it. So this is something where you have the opportunity to say your brand name plus a keyword that people are searching for. Use that SEO o title space to do that.
[00:36:27] Um, and meta description to describe what else you have to offer. So those are like the lowest hanging fruit and like the biggest. Drivers to getting you ranked higher and like kind of boosting your traffic on those pages. And if you even like just look on a Google page, like do a Google search of your own for anything you've been looking for, looking at lately.
[00:36:50] Just notice, like take notice of which ones you click on and why you clicked on those. Because understanding that of like, why did I click on that? Was it because [00:37:00] it was a question based SEO title? Was it because they used a word that like really. Drove me to click on it. A lot of times, like for blog posts, people love to click on numbers.
[00:37:11] So 10 ways, two, five ways, or um, or like how-tos, things like that. People love to click on those. So those can help drive more. But it might even just be words like the ultimate guide too, like, you know, there's like words like that that get people to wanna click through, but those updates from an SEO perspective, just focus on.
[00:37:33] For your best performing products, best performing categories, your homepage, because that's kind of the lowest hanging fruit that can make some really big changes. And then also don't, don't expect them to make changes tomorrow. You gotta give yourself like three to four months before you actually start noticing some changes.
[00:37:51] But, um, that's what I would go after first, like worry less about alt text and worry more about those SEO titles because when it comes [00:38:00] to being found on Google, that's gonna drive way more traffic.
[00:38:03] Monica Little: Awesome. I love it. It's such good feedback and I know people who are listening are gonna have all these awesome ideas, and excited and amped about getting seen on Google and all these search consoles, so that's awesome.
[00:38:15] So there's one more question I wanted to, two more questions I wanna ask you. So first, when we talk about SEO and organic marketing in general, Instagram, your brand, all of that organic stuff that doesn't cost you any money. I would love to get your perspective. We've kind of talked about it, but how does this fit in an overall strategy for a product business?
[00:38:35] So I would
[00:38:36] Abbey: say it's, I mean, we talk about this all time, but it's so important not to put all your eggs in one basket. Like you can't just depend on Instagram to drive sales for you. Um, you can't just depend on your email list either, like, you know, sometimes that might not be growing as fast as you want it to, or you only have a certain amount of people that you're speaking to there.
[00:38:55] You also just need to. A way to bring in business [00:39:00] for people in, not in that like selling mindset, but you wanna bring them into, or buying mindset. You wanna bring them into your universe even before they're ready to buy. And uh, most of the time the way to do that is to drive engagement through content that you're creating.
[00:39:15] So although that can work on social, it works really well from blogging too. And then you do need to think about like, okay, once I've brought them, I brought them in through my blog. Now you need to think about how to get them to hang out with you longer. Mm-hmm. , like, is that an email list sign up? Is that a follow on Instagram?
[00:39:32] It's basically a part of the whole equation of bringing someone into your ecosystem. And um, if you use like Google Analytics, you can see right there. , how are people coming into your ecosystem? And it'll show you a breakout of search. It'll show you social, it'll show you direct traffic, like people who know you so well, they're just typing in your domain directly.
[00:39:53] Um, and then it will also show you referral traffic, which is basically your website being linked on other websites [00:40:00] that are driving traffic to you. So if you were featured in a blog post or a gift guide or something like that, um, and you can kind of see like, okay, where do I stand? How are people finding me right now?
[00:40:10] Because that can be a really eye-opening reason to be like, wow, is this like, what? Is this where I'm putting my effort? Because say you are putting all of your effort on social, but it's not even your biggest traffic driver. And then you might find that like that's a situation where, okay, I'm putting my effort in the wrong space and I need to be actually focusing somewhere else.
[00:40:31] So your effort should reflect the traffic. And if it's not, then I think you kind of need to reevaluate where you're spending your. Yeah,
[00:40:39] Monica Little: either reevaluate where you're spending time or learn how to be better at the platform that you're using that's not driving what you think it is. Right. Because that's what I see a lot too, is people are spending a lot of time on Instagram, but it's learning how to sell on Instagram, learning how to educate on Instagram.
[00:40:55] Um, so it may be, yeah, pivoting to a different platform or really doubling down to [00:41:00] actually say, okay, spending all this effort, it's not leading to sales, so I gotta learn how to do this or get help or outsource or hire someone to actually make. Lead to results because at the end of the day, if we're not getting more people in our ecosystem, or if we're not getting more people to buy from us, then it's a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of you know, money.
[00:41:18] Cuz time is money that we're spending. Right. Not growing our business. Right. So,
[00:41:22] Abbey: yeah. And social too. I mean, if you stop posting on social, you're gonna stop making sales. Like that is probably what's gonna happen. You might still pop up every now and again, but you're, if you're. Active, it's not gonna work if you have a well optimized website and well optimized content.
[00:41:39] It's going to drive traffic for you for years. So it's such, it's something where if you spend the time to optimize your website and to do it the right way, it's going to be so great for you in the long run. Whereas something like social is just so much harder to get that long-term value out of it because you need to be consistent all the.[00:42:00]
[00:42:00] Yeah,
[00:42:00] Monica Little: a hundred percent. And that's what I teach a lot of my clients is passive income. It's your website, it's Etsy, which, which Etsy is very similar to all the s e stuff we've been talking about today. Um, it's getting on wholesale e-commerce platforms like Fair, which is also seo because people, retailers are searching for different items.
[00:42:19] So you have to. Set up, right. So it's SEO in different ways on different platforms, but I think a lot of what we talk today can be used across those other platforms too. But yeah, all about that passive income and getting set up in those spots, so, mm-hmm. , if you do take a break from social media, if you do take a break to go on vacation, you're still getting those orders coming in because you're still showing.
[00:42:42] On
[00:42:42] Abbey: this platform. Yeah. I found this, um, fact too when I was looking at something else, but I found this fact where they had said 36% increase in the number of Americans that are doing most of their household or grocery shopping online now as compared to. Pre pandemic. So that's [00:43:00] a huge, that is a huge chunk of people who are now doing all of that shopping online because they're so used to shopping online during the pandemic world.
[00:43:08] And now from a shopping perspective, this is where people go first. Um, and if you're not showing up there, like that's gonna be even harder for y those people to find you. So I, I think this is something where like even if you have a brick and mortar location, people are still, start. Online. They're not just driving around looking for stores.
[00:43:27] They're still starting their search online, so that's still super important.
[00:43:31] Monica Little: Yeah, a hundred percent. I love it. Okay, so last question that I have for both of you today is talk me through a little bit about how you help business owners with s e o, with marketing, all of the fun stuff that you offer and where people can find you too.
[00:43:48] Yeah,
[00:43:48] Abbey: so all things organic marketing, so we don't touch anything paid. So that's one of the things that we always like to say first. And we always say like, a lot of people who come and talk to us are like, [00:44:00] okay, I have been running paid ads and they haven't been working for me. And, um, most of the time we're like, yeah, we're not super surprised because until you have an organic strategy that is working really well for you, paids not gonna work.
[00:44:11] Yep. And so it's a situation where organic helps you drive a good paid strategy. So do organic first, even though it takes more patience, because otherwise you're spending money and you also are losing time cuz you're spending money that's not working. So, um, we focus mainly on, uh, branding, social strategy and s e o.
[00:44:33] And when it comes to s e o we do, we kind of work with people all over the board based on like budgets and what they, what they can do. Because we know a lot of times, like when you're just starting your business, we wanna make sure that your website is. But we know that you don't have like massive budgets to make that work.
[00:44:50] So, um, we have like website starter kits. We do strategy sessions, so we can just hop on the phone and talk through like what we'd recommend. Do keyword research live, set up [00:45:00] your Google tools if you. Heard us say Google Search Console and have no idea what we talked about, . Um, so we do that a lot on those calls too.
[00:45:08] And we also have a course, so the course is called SEO on Tap, and that course is basically how we audit websites broken down so you can do it yourself. So if you're a DIYer, you can steal all of our strategies,
[00:45:22] Monica Little: Essent. . I think one
[00:45:24] Courtney: of my favorite things about um, when we do those audits is that we have two routes that people can go.
[00:45:29] So we have a route where they can do the optimizations themselves. We basically give them all the tools and kind of teach them what they need to do. Or Abby will jump in and do those optimizations. Mm-hmm. . And it's so funny because every time we have a client kickoff call, they either know one way or the other, they're like, I'm absolutely not doing this.
[00:45:46] Or they're like, oh yeah, I wanna learn and I wanna jump in and do it myself. So we love having that flexibility with our clients too. Allowing them to either take it and run with it, or Abby will go in and do it for them if they do not wanna touch it at all. Because we're kind [00:46:00] of in that mindset of like, we wanna teach our clients as well too, like our clients, our audience.
[00:46:04] We don't wanna just like throw all this jargon at you and be like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And it's very, very technical. It's not. So, um, I just think that that's really fun and unique. Um, just to see like when people wanna do it and when people are like, absolutely
[00:46:18] Abbey: not . Yeah, yeah, yeah. The education piece of it is like something that we'll never not do, like in every offering we have, it's like we will like educate you on this topic.
[00:46:29] So like, even if you aren't physically doing the updates, like we want you to know why it's important and what we're doing, because we also don't wanna be like, you need to hire. Monthly to like fix this for you ongoing. We'd rather just arm you with the solution so that you feel confident to make the updates moving forward.
[00:46:47] Which I think, I mean, I wish that was the case with everything across the board, but it's, it's not, cuz I think sometimes in the s e l space, the jargon can just be confusing and people can just feel overwhelmed. And [00:47:00] if someone is paying for someone else to like do monthly updates on their website, I'm u I, the first question I ask is, what are they doing for you?
[00:47:07] and people are like, I don't know. I'm like, oh, breaks my heart. Like why don't you? But you so sad.
[00:47:11] Monica Little: Yeah, it's, I actually had that same conversation with one of my clients that isn't like that exact question. Yeah, yeah. But that's what I love about what you offer. It's like, yeah, if you want me to come in and do it for you, you guys will do it.
[00:47:24] Or. And actually you'll learn along the way. Mm-hmm. . And if you need to make updates, you can totally make the updates on your own, but you're here to support if they need help. So I love how you both run your business and how helpful you are for business owners and the amazing knowledge that you have. So I think with that, I just wanna say thank you.
[00:47:42] Thank you both so much. It's is such a fun conversation. I'm so excited to hear what our listeners have to think. But thank you both for your time. Before we end, where can people find you? What's your website and your Instagram
[00:47:53] Abbey: before I forget? Yeah, duo collective.com. Instagram is at duo dot collective, [00:48:00] right?
[00:48:00] Card . Correct. . Um, so yeah, we're there. We also have a podcast duo on air, um, which we talk a lot about all of these things, seo, branding, social, um, so yeah.
[00:48:12] Monica Little: Awesome. And I'll, I'll get those links and I'll put 'em in the show notes and people can find you there. But thank you both so much and I know I'll be talking to you too soon.
[00:48:21] Thank you. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for hanging out with me here inside the Product Biz Podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and to leave a five star review. And if you're interested in learning more about Product Biz Academy, my signature group coaching program for handmade small business owners like you who are looking to create consistent online sales with their business, then go to the product biz podcast.com to join the wait list.
[00:48:51] Doors are currently closed, but you'll be first notified when they reopen. Thank you so much, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Product Biz [00:49:00] Podcast.