GABE GOTAY
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Promo Perspectives, a new live stream podcast brought to you by SAGE dedicated to giving promotional products suppliers and distributors fresh perspectives and unique insights on how to help grow your business. Today, uh, we’re going to be talking about SEO and how to help get your business’s website higher in Google rankings. I’m joined today by SAGE’s own Dakota Smith …
DAKOTA SMITH
Hello!
GABE GOTAY
Uh, if you are listening to the live version now – you’re on us with Zoom – thank you so much for joining. Make sure you go and check out this podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. We’ll post it next week and we’re going to have all kinds of bonus content that you can’t get here. Go ahead and register, uh subscribe now! If you’re listening to the podcast version now head to SAGEworld.com to register for the next live stream. We have some really cool uh shows coming up in the next couple of months.
But for today, let’s dive into SEO. And to get started, Dakota, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience?
DAKOTA SMITH
Thanks Gabe. I’m Dakota Smith. I am the website consultant supervisor here at SAGE – first and foremost a website consultant – and my role is to help people navigate their websites, the features that are offered, and general understanding of best practices. And when they need advice to help get more out of their sites.
GABE GOTAY
Alright, well let’s go ahead and start talking about SEO and we’ll start at the very top level. I think a lot of people are pretty familiar with it now, you know it’s a somewhat of a marketing buzzword and we’ve all become very familiar with the fact that we have to do it, but it’s always good to start with the basics. So why don’t you kind of cover SEO from a broad perspective?
DAKOTA SMITH
Yeah, so let’s start at the top. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a way in which you can help influence your rankings with Google. Google uses what is called signals, and this is going to be a whole bunch of different data points that they use to understand your site, but not only understand, but help them offer the best recommendations. Google’s sole goal is to provide people with answers to their queries, and so through SEO you’re going to help Google and other search engines understand more about who you are, what you offer, and what is the content of your pages. Um, now just another side note, I’m going to talk about Google a lot. Please understand that this is about search engines in general. Google just happens to have the biggest piece of the pie. And so um, when I talk about search engines, I’m just going to say Google, but really it applies to all ways that you can be found online.
GABE GOTAY
Well, so is Google still King? Because there have been a couple of people that have tried to squeeze into that market, you know, Yahoo back in the day, DuckDuckGo maybe for those who are more security conscious, um, but when it comes to actual best practices and what you’re doing and what you’re recommending that our audience does, this is going off of Google?
DAKOTA SMITH
That’s right, it is going to be Google. Now, the thing to realize with that is that while Google is still the biggest piece of the pie, there are other people that still, like you said, use DuckDuckGo maybe for security or use some of the other things like being um, so you can always optimize for Google and then also take steps to optimize for the other platforms, but you’re going to get the most out of your energy that you spend on optimizing if you focus on Google.
GABE GOTAY
Let’s take it from the beginning. What is the most important thing to consider when starting SEO, uh, in terms of setting up your goals?
DAKOTA SMITH
Right, so to me, good SEO is always going to start with a marketing goal. So the idea of who you’re targeting, what you’re looking to sell or service for people, that is going to drive every point that you do in SEO. So that marketing goal of “I want to be the antenna ball king of the area,” um, that is going to be what you use to frame the different pieces. SEO is going to boil down to a bunch of small pieces that are all pointing in the same direction, that help you gain notoriety, help you gain um, position, and be recommended on those Google searches.
GABE GOTAY
So how about the difference between SEO and SEM? Because I feel like I see those acronyms next to each other all the time and they always seem to be talking about relation to getting better search ranking. So are they the same thing or what’s kind of the difference between the two?
DAKOTA SMITH
That’s a great question. So SEM, or search engine marketing, is where you’re buying things like Google Ads for placement. Now, ads are great. They’re a great way of getting traffic, however, it’s going to benefit you more if you have an infrastructure in place that is going to get you good traffic. And what I mean by good traffic is the ideal customer for you. So you might not want anybody to hit your site. You might want specifically the people that might be purchasing or a specific type of company. Maybe you work very closely with construction companies. You would want to be targeting and in the areas that those types of people might be doing queries. That is going to net you more than just simply putting out the big sign, “I’m here, you know, come by and see what I have to offer.”
Um, and so what I always think of is start with a good foundation of SEO, build your site so that it’s optimized, create the content that’s needed to find, have Google be recommending your site, and then power that marketing push with advertising. That is what’s going to help you, you know, kind of push it through, um, and get more from it than just simply buying ads alone, because those ads can be expensive and they can go quick. So making sure that you have that infrastructure to capitalize on it is always going to net you more than just the ads themselves.
GABE GOTAY
But the foundation has to be built organically, is what you’re saying.
DAKOTA SMITH
Yeah, and that’s a good point. So organic growth is what you’re always after in terms of SEO. Now, this is from Google. Good SEO, organic growth is something that’s going to take time. This is going to be something that happens between six months to a year, maybe even 18 months for you to see real progress. And that can be challenging when you are working or spending money at developing this and not seeing a return right away. You have to understand that you’re building a foundation. You’re helping people find your site. You’re helping Google and other machines understand what you offer, understand the capabilities of what you offer. You know, because while computers are getting smarter, they still can’t see an image and understand it. So, for an example, one of the things you can do in SEO is make sure you have the proper alt information or the proper tags. This is going to be kind of the direct computer language that they’re looking at and go, “Oh, here’s a picture, what’s on it? Oh, here’s the description, this is a logo with, you know, red text.” So they’re able to go, “I understand what’s on this page now. I can recommend it to someone.”
GABE GOTAY
And, you know, like you said, it can be daunting with there’s so many things that you have to manage when you’re taking care of the SEO, and it takes a long time. I know a lot of our audience, there tend to be smaller businesses, you know, they’re Mom and Pop Shops, some of them, and some of them might even have, you know, a couple of hundred employees, but maybe not a dedicated web team or a dedicated SEO team like SAGE is lucky to have people that handle that stuff. So even though the organic stuff doesn’t necessarily cost money in terms of it’s free to change the content on your website and stuff like that, people might have to invest to work with SEO companies. But like you said, it takes a long time. It can take six months or more to see those initial organic results, and that’s daunting enough on its own, but it’s even more daunting to think about paying somebody when you’re not going to see the results of their work for six to eight months.
Um, so my question for you is, what should businesses look for in an SEO company that’s going to provide them those kinds of services to make sure they’re getting somebody who really is putting in the work over that time?
DAKOTA SMITH
Yeah, uh, this is kind of a tricky question because there are so many companies now that offer these services. The first bit of advice I have is don’t go with anyone that has hit your inbox saying that you’ll be top of Google. Um, first of all, no one can guarantee that. Um, the other part of this is when you’re working with an SEO company, make sure they’re taking the time to understand your industry, your company, and your marketing goals. Um, a lot of times people get caught in what I call the optimization loop, that is where these companies will evaluate the site and their goal is to find problems. Hey, this is an issue. Here’s what we can do to fix it. Here’s how it can be optimized. And that’s helpful, but you reach this point where you hit kind of a critical mass of optimization where yes, you can do more to be more optimized, however, that’s not going to net you more people. That’s going to net you a percentage of a view that’s that’s going to maybe rise your rankings a slight bit or it may not even affect it.
And that can be frustrating when I see people caught in that optimization loop because the emphasis that some of these companies put on these specific optimizations, yes, there’s things you can do that might be detrimental in terms of setup or architecture, but in large, once you hit a certain point of optimization, you need to be shifting over from optimization to content creation.
And that’s going to be the other part. So when you’re working with one of these SEO companies, have them do an audit of your site. Have them tell you what they see is wrong and what you could do to improve or what they would do for you. Um, this will give you an understanding of how they’re going to approach this, how they’re going to tackle it, um, and then what you might be paying their services for. And for me, one of the best things you can pay for is going to be content.
Content that’s specific to you and your audience is going to help you be found better than just simply having one more product that gets indexed. You’re competing with those products against, you know, thousands of other sites that may have the same if not the similar items. And so it becomes, “why should I work with you?” And that’s always going to be a more personalized answer that deserves that unique content to help you stand out.
So creating that content that can be in the form of um pages that are content-rich that are going to target something specific, um, to blog posts, to social media posts, um, kind of or even email campaigns. And so making sure you have a good understanding of what they’re going to be doing, how they’re going to be helping you, and really and truly, if you don’t have the time to create your own content, that is the biggest thing you can do. Content is king. It always has been. That is that is what Google at the end of the day is looking for. I’m looking for good content.
Now, if you have a product that’s great, but if you have the ability to answer a question, so some of those strategies can be things like making sure you have a good About page, a good page that goes over your services, what you offer, how you can help, um, and then also one of the other things that’s becoming more popular or more helpful is going to be an FAQ page. And part of this is with the rise of AI, um, AI is a great tool, and search engines are starting to see that it can help answer questions quicker. And so think of it this way, get into the mind of your customer, what questions might they be asking before they even contact you? Um, what are the best file types for a shirt, uh, for a shirt imprint? Um, what are, you know, the best hats for this kind of event? If you can speak to those types of questions and provide concise, short answers, you have a chance of showing up in that AI recommendation that’s going to show up before people’s paid advertisements, before people’s natural organic um sites. And so those are the kinds of things to think about when we talk about content. There’s a lot of different content you can be creating, and that’s money well spent in my opinion.
GABE GOTAY
That’s a great answer, and I have a handful of things from that that I want to dive into. But let’s just take it from where you left off there, talking about AI content in general. Because it is new, and it seems to be changing some of the paradigms of what Google is looking for. Like you had mentioned, getting in the mindset of what is your customer looking for before they even get to your website. They’re Googling things like, what, like you said, what size does the file need to be for an imprint or things like that. And beyond just having those answers in your text, raising your rankings, there’s a lot of new modules in Google now, like at the very top of Google, is the AI suggested summary where it just gives an answer, and that answer might come from your webpage if you’ve provided that information.
DAKOTA SMITH
Right, and that’s the trick is you can load an FAQ with general FAQ information that’s not going to help you. And that’s where having that targeted information’s helpful. Now, the world of AI is vast. There’s AI that’s going to help you with copywriting. There’s AI that’s going to be able to generate images. Um, and the thing to think about is, you know, first of all, it is a new space. So always, always put your human eyes to whatever an AI has created to vet it before you put it on your site. Um, some things to think about in terms of AI that may not just be readily apparent is, um, like for AI images, there’s still at the point where they’re fairly obvious that they’re AI images. And the last thing you want is to turn someone off because they think that you’re offering fake services. Um, there was a news article that happened a little while ago where people were advertising their services of a party planner, and they had AI images, and they looked incredible. Well, they got hired, and they couldn’t deliver. And I will tell you that from that experience and from those reviews, people aren’t going to use them. So that’s the thing to think about, always temper, you know, AI creations with, you know, is this adding to my site? Is it taking away because it’s AI-made?
When it comes to copywriting, you gotta read it. Um, AI is getting better and better at getting close to impersonating human speech. And so with that, you want to just make sure it’s still staying in your voice. You know, coming back to marketing, coming back to what’s starting all of this SEO, um, your company’s going to have a tone, professional, casual, whatever it is that’s part of your brand, and that needs to be carried through throughout your site. So making sure that you’re using these tools effectively while still keeping in your brand is important. You don’t want to suddenly have a page that sounds like you’re a professor at Harvard when you’re going for that more casual,”let us help you with anything and everything, where your neighbor” kind of feel. That’s going to be a little off-putting or a little jarring at least.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and that takes me back to one of the other things I wanted to bring up from your last answer, which was you said, “You know, content is king, and to make sure you have good content.” And that that modifier, “good,” carries a lot of weight because it can mean a lot of different things. For instance, like you said, if you’re using AI content, then you need to proofread the content, make sure it’s not offering false things. And this ties back into one of the other things you had said, um, with having a marketing goal ahead of time and making sure any SEO company you’re working with is on board with what your marketing goal is and is setting their KPIs based on that goal. Because if they’re just doing an audit and, like you said, the loop of just trying to random numbers up, if you’re not going based on what your marketing goal was, it’s not going to matter that you get people to your website if your website is not delivering. You know, you gave the example of the image showing things that that service didn’t offer, right?
Even before the AI generation, I have a friend who works for a very small machine shop. You know, they make parts, and they again, a very small company. They don’t have people on staff to constantly manage SEO, so they hired some freelancer who was just some kid that they heard about through a friend. And he got them in quite a bit of trouble because he had added some of these pages that were just filled with what he thought were good keywords to get good/more searches from people looking for machine shops, but he had terms on there that were services they physically couldn’t offer with what they had. And it’s one thing, you know, for your SEO that’s bad because you’re getting a bounce, and that’s something we can talk about too, is like what happens after SEO. But in that case, that was something bordering on false advertising that could get somebody in a lot of trouble.
DAKOTA SMITH
Right, and that’s the problem with some AI content is that it doesn’t have the context for you. Now, that is the best thing you can do if you’re using AI is provide good context, a good understanding of who you are, your goals, just like working with that marketing company. You know, this is a tool, it needs to understand your goals. Um, and so making sure that you are always being in the driver’s seat of that before it hits your site is important. Um, you know, it might go, “Oh, you’re in this industry, so you clearly offer these things,” kind of like what you were talking about when that might not be something you specialize in or even worse, it might be something that you just simply can’t offer. Um, the last thing you want is, you know, and you mentioned it, is the bounce rate. So there are negative metrics that can happen that Google uses that will lower your ranking.
Now, some of these, a lot of these have derived from people being manipulative to the system. So, early internet, keywords were king. If you had that keyword on the page, you were being found. If someone was Googling that, um, Google’s wised up, they see that people are being exploitative, and they take steps to monitor that. So things like keywords, white text on a white background, those kind of practices will lower your ranking if Google sees that you’re doing those manipulative practices. If you’re intentionally trying to use things that are exploitative, um, and so it’s really important to make sure that you are um just looking through it, um,
GABE GOTAY
Keeping up with the newer trends too, making sure that because it’s one thing for black hat tactics, right, where you’re specifically trying to abuse the system or exploit the system, but I’m sure also just outdated or less important tactics that, because like I mentioned earlier, SEO is not a new thing. I feel like, I mean, it’s not new in general, but even among just the Layman business owner, right, like maybe 10, 15 years ago, they were hearing about SEO for the first time. They’re like, “What do you mean my Facebook page isn’t enough?” But they’ve since learned, like a lot of the stuff we’ve already been talking about, but they might have learned some things that just don’t really matter anymore, and they might be putting their focus in the wrong places. Like, are there any examples you can think of of any outdated tactics?
DAKOTA SMITH
So, I mean, keywords would be one of those, right? Uh, Google almost hardly uses keywords anymore. Um, they’re influential, but they’re not going to move the needle. Um, and so, you know, the biggest, the biggest things are things that are like, I like we talked about, are labeled black hat, that are these exploitative practices. Um, the things to watch out for there are going to be um, anything like if you hear your SEO company’s doing something, and you feel like it’s a little, it seems shady, definitely question it. Um, nothing’s coming to my mind necessarily about like super outdated information. Um, the big thing would be uh, the space does change, so it is worth checking in.
Um, there can be things like uh, you know, for, for example, if you have an image, you want to have that alt information. Now, it doesn’t need to be hyper-descriptive, and that’s where sometimes some of these people will put in way more information than what’s needed to try to boost the the the ratings, right? But those kind of practices can be detrimental. Um, you one of the negative metrics is Bounce rate. That’s going to be if someone hits your site and leaves within five, five seconds of hitting your site. So that can come into the design of your site. Is it user-friendly? Is it easy to use? Is it easy to navigate? Because when you’re creating content for SEO, you got to keep in mind, like there’s still a human element there. You’re not only making the site for machines. There still has to be that human element. And if you make it where it’s so loaded with content and keywords that it takes away from the usefulness of your site, that’s where it can start to be detrimental. Um, so that’s that kind of optimization going overboard. Now, as the user, I’m struggling to find what I’m wanting because it has been so bloated, um, and just becomes hard to navigate.
GABE GOTAY
You cater too much to the robots, and now people can’t actually navigate your site anymore.
DAKOTA SMITH
And that’s the balance. You know, you want the machines to understand what is going on on your site, but at the end of the day, it’s the people that need to use it. So maintaining the understanding of is this a good user experience, um, finding ways to reduce the amount of clicks someone goes to to find what they’re looking for. So if you’re marketing for um a golf tournament, they should be able to find golf-related items fairly quickly on hitting your site. Again, within that five seconds, if they can’t find what they’re looking for, they might be out. And that might not be something that you’re mindful of, like, “Oh, I sent out that email blast for those golf things, but you didn’t update your site.” And now you’re having people that are expecting that type of information and not finding it.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and that’s why it kind of ties into the fact that SEO is a pillar of the overall marketing strategy. And just like with any of the other pillars, you need to make sure your marketing strategy is, you know, collected, and it all is going after the same goal. Like you mentioned, having email campaigns and making sure that what’s on your website matches up. You know, I don’t typically go into like a lot of the technical details of the sale, the SAGE products that we have, but this is why we have certain things like the custom product pages and the curated pages, and then we have email campaigns with those same things and print catalogs with those same themes, so that you can have all these different pillars of your marketing efforts are tying together, so no matter how you actually end up hitting that one lead, that is actually going to convert, they are seeing the relevant information.
DAKOTA SMITH
You got it. I mean, again, that’s that consistency across the board. All the little pieces that you’re doing pointing towards that same thing. If it’s that golf tournament, you know, you’re, you’re social media is talking about golf, your email’s talking about golf, uh, there’s golf on your site as soon as you can find, you know, as soon as they hit the site, um, that’s just going to add to that better user experience, that flow that becomes like they don’t even have to think about it. They’re like, “Oh, that was interesting. Click. Oh, hey, here it is. Here’s more information.” Um, you know, it, we need that level of engagement to be successful.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and then later, this is part of where it comes back into the SEO thing, is if they did that and they click, and sure, maybe they don’t buy right then, because statistically, most people who receive a piece of marketing are not in the market at the moment they receive it, right? But in the future, when they go to Google for their golf tournament needs, because you are in their search and their history and their browser cache for having been on your website for your golf stuff before, you’re more likely, I believe, to show up in your search results, right? Um, and just to tie it more into some of the other marketing practices, one of the cornerstones of any good marketing practice is evaluation and iteration, right? So we talked about going back to these SEO companies, you might be working with, you do need those people with that expertise to be handling the minutia in the day-to-day, but the dashboards of like the particular KPIs that they’re working on, the things that they’re optimizing, those are pretty easy to come to understand. So can you talk about the importance of using those yourself, even if you’re paying an SEO company?
DAKOTA SMITH
Oh yes, um, I am a strong advocate of making sure you have access to that data. The same data that they’re using to evaluate you, you want to see as well. So make sure you have access to the most popular things are going to be Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Um, again, you can take like year-long courses to become an expert on it, but that’s not what’s needed. The idea here is benchmarks. Hey, here’s where we started. Here’s the information. Here’s our approximate traffic. Here’s what people are interested in. Okay, here’s where we started. Now we did a big email push, a social media push. Are there any correlations between when we sent that out and increased traffic? Um, if you’re not seeing that increased traffic, then it’s like evaluation time. Okay, well, uh, is there something wrong with my email? Go back and look at it. Do all the links work? It, like, it could be something like that where your marketing is effective, but some piece of the puzzle wasn’t checked, like the link doesn’t actually connect would be one of the big ones. Like, “Oh, I’m not getting traffic because the link was broken.” That’s clear. Or maybe your audience doesn’t engage with that type of content. And so that email blast might have been more successful as a social media post.
And so this evaluation as you go through is there to help you refine and focus your efforts. You know, you don’t want to be spinning your wheels, feeling like, “I’m spinning all this money, not getting anywhere.” You want to see that it’s being effective. And something that might be interesting is as you look at that data, you might go, “Wow, I’m getting a lot of interest in bags, and I don’t even market towards bags.” Well, guess what? Maybe we start marketing towards bags. Or maybe you have one piece that’s really successful, and you, your other following pieces aren’t as successful. Then it’s like, evaluation, is that specific item I’m selling more popular? Is it seasonally more relevant? You know, you got to start thinking about the other factors that can influence this. And and what you’re doing is you’re, you’re kind of making a graph in your mind of how effective it was. And these tools are great at actually visualizing all that data too, um, and seeing, you know, it’s it’s that evaluation process
Gabe Gotay
Getting a benchmark. And, you know, it is not to like plug this tool as like an ad or anything, but I’ve used like SEMrush and things like that a lot before. And it is amazing the amount of data you get. And not just about your own business, um, you can put in and see everything that you can get about your own website from a tool like SEMrush. You can get about your competitor’s websites. So like you said, you might see, “Oh, I’m getting more hits on a certain category than I expected.” You might also see that your competitor up the road is getting more hits in a category that you thought you were leading the market in, right? And this is going to tie back into why you, the business owner, need to be the one who’s also going in and looking at these things because these SEO companies might be trying to boost your rankings, but they don’t understand really who your competitors are, especially in this industry where a lot of the businesses tend to be working in very regional levels. Like who is it important to actually be looking and comparing yourself against? Um, and the other thing you mentioned is like, yes, there are these classes you can take online for a few hours, maybe that you learn, and no, you don’t have to spend your whole week for the whole year doing these things. But if you’re a business owner, absolutely check out some of these free courses on, like YouTube or LinkedIn, and some of these places because, you know, I asked you earlier about outdated tactics, and it kind of seemed like you said there aren’t a ton of outdated ones, but there’s always new ones. So, right, it is good to kind of get your, keep yourself up to date as a business owner, even if you’re not going to be in the weeds.
Um, Dakota, we are running out of time here. So before I wrap up, are there any other tips or tricks that you would like to share with the audience or just thoughts?
DAKOTA SMITH
Yeah, uh, don’t be overwhelmed by SEO, right? It, it always seems daunting when someone starts to look at optimization. Uh, it’s just that one step at a time. You take one, one thing, you get it pointing the right way, then you move on to the next thing. So it’s, it’s a gradual thing that you work on. Almost constantly, you’re most effective um, doing things consistently over trying to sporadically do things. So the biggest change is a, a little shift in thinking of like, “How can this all align? Like, I’m looking to get more customers. Okay, those specific customers, what are they looking for? How can I, you know, target them?” And then it’s that evaluation process. But it’s, it’s always just that one small step that you take to the next one. And eventually, all of those data points start to line up and help you uh be found.
GABE GOTAY
One foot in front of the other, you can’t, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You got to take it one step at a time.
DAKOTA SMITH
Certainly.
GABE GOTAY
Well, Dakota, thank you so much for joining us today. You were great. I’m sure some of the audience already seen him. He has given many wonderful presentations about some of our SAGE web products. Um, so he has, he’s just one of the experts in the field. Thanks again for joining us today. Remember, this is going to be published everywhere you get your podcast. And we have some really great content coming out of the rest of the year. Off the bat, there’s going to be a bonus episode only available on the podcast platforms. You can’t tune in live for it where I’m going to talk about web design with Brittany, uh, from Brittany Baum from the marketing department here at SAGE. And in the coming months, we’re going to have some special guests from PPAI. We’re going to talk about topics ranging from getting ready for the PPAI Expo and the behind-the-scenes of that, all the way to how we are helping represent the promotional products industry in Washington DC. So lots of cool topics coming up. I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Thank you for joining us today, and hopefully, we’ll see you on the next one. Thanks again, Dakota. Thank you.