Beginners SEO Podcast
Welcome to the Beginners SEO Podcast. Perfect for all small business owners and solo marketing teams.
In each episode we're going to touch on a different aspect of search engine optimization, mainly focusing on easy SEO tips for beginners that YOU can use on your business website to grow your organic traffic.
Want to get started with your SEO now? Head to www.theplansuccess.com for free SEO tools and resources for beginners!
Beginners SEO Podcast
How Long Does SEO Take: Mini Episode
Straight to it today because I didn't see the point in dragging out one question to a 15-20 minute podcast episode!
Let's find out once and for all, how long does SEO take?
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Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Beginners SEO podcast with me, phoebe Gill from the Plan Success. Now, today's episode is like it's like it says in the title how to do SEO for free and, as always, we're going to keep it really top level beginner stuff, because I don't want you feeling overwhelmed. You can do your own SEO. You don't need to outsource it. You can learn how to do your own without fancy tools. So shall we get into it Now?
Speaker 1:My favorite favorite SEO tool, the one I use every single day the most, is, without doubt, google Search Console. I love this. I have access to all the paid fancy tools, but I still use Google Search Console the most. Why? Because the data from it is actually coming from Google. I know it's correct. It's not guessing at the data, which you'll find many of the other paid SEO tools are actually doing. They've got their own. You know proprietary algorithms for how they work out data, but they're guessing, whereas Google Search Console data is actually coming from Google Search Console.
Speaker 1:So I mean, what I don't want you to do is, when you click open your Google Search Console is to see I'm just going to click open mine now. Actually, you land first of all, on the search results tab and I'm talking about the tab. Oh no, you don't. You land on overview, I think. On the left hand side there's a column and there's all these different options and you might be like, oh my gosh, there's too much here, I don't know what all of it is, this is way too overwhelming and click off it. You don't need to click off it. What you need to remember is that you only care about a few points on it and don't worry about feeling like I don't know how to use it because I don't know all these things do. It's fine. Do you know a secret about software developers and programmers? They don't actually know how to do all either Half the time they're googling, okay. So remember that whenever you find a new tool online and it looks really complicated, you don't ever need to learn it all. You only need to learn the parts that you're going to use.
Speaker 1:So if we're on Google Search Console in the left-hand column, the bits I think you should care about are search results and Then I like links and, to be honest, at the bottom, that is all you really need to care about. If you're having, you know, indexing problems, then you might want to be looking at sort of the indexing pages. But let's don't get bogged down with that right now. What I think you should be using Google Search Console for is that search results button. Here you'll see a blue line and a red, a purple line I'm not colorblind, it's definitely purple and you'll also see at the top. The title is performance on search results, and what it's showing me here is the total clicks, ie how many times people have actually clicked on my results, ie how much organic traffic I'm getting, and then the total impressions, and total impressions is how many times I'm showing up in the search results but they haven't necessarily clicked on me. You'll then also see the average CTR, which is the click-through rate. Obviously you want that to be going up, and then you'll also see your average position. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1:Google Search Console actually gives you a ranking tool, a free ranking tool, and you can really drill down on this by just above these clicks, impressions, ctr sections. There's also some filters and if you click click new filter and then click into country, you can then pop in your primary country. So, for instance, for me it would be Australia and I will see my average ranking for the whole website in Australia, but that's not really very useful. Actually, what I want to see is my average ranking for a specific page. So if I go to my home page, then I can see, within Australia, my ranking on that home page. And I can go even one step further and find out the ranking for each keyword on Google Search Console in Australia by clicking on the query as well. When I say query on Google Search Console, it basically means keyword, exactly what someone typed into Google to click on my website. So, just like that, on Google Search Console there's a free keyword ranking tool that I can use without having to pay any money.
Speaker 1:All you need to do is filter by country, filter by page and then filter by each query, and you can also then compare the time. You know how was I doing last month compared to this month? You can then also, if you want to get a bit fancy and start getting technical, why don't you create a little simple spreadsheet on Google Sheets or Excel whatever, and you can keep track weekly or monthly. I'd suggest monthly, actually, because they do fluctuate. Check monthly how your keyword is improving isn't that cool and that's free.
Speaker 1:I also really like Google search console because when you're first getting started with SEO and your first us on your website, you might not be getting any clicks and it can be very disheartening, but as long as you're getting a few impressions, that purple line then you know you're on the right track. So you'll find your impressions start going up and then your clicks should follow. And if they don't start following, then what you want to do is drill down into the query section per page and have a look at how each query is doing and if you can maybe optimize the page, improve the page content for the queries that are doing better on impressions than those not. And when I say better, they have more impressions. So, just like that, google Search Console gives you so much data just from that one tap.
Speaker 1:The other reason I really like Google Search Console is for backlink monitoring and internal linking as well. Now, semrush and Ahrefs are probably the two most popular SEO software tools and they can be pretty spenny, putting people off them. And then also, I remember when I first started with SEO, I clicked open Ahrefs, I clicked open SEMrush and I had that same feeling like, oh my, I'm such an idiot. I don't understand any of this. Let me tell you a secret now. I use Ahrefs and SEMrush every single day with my clients and I actually although I know, probably say what 80% of it all does. I only use about 20% of it. There's just no point all these fancy tools. They have those fancy tools there so that they can sell those tools. You know, use it as selling points. You don't actually need all those tools, especially when it comes to the backlink profiles. They say it's a really great thing to do with competitors check their backlink profiles, and then you can reverse engineer it by trying to go after the same backlinks.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was great a few years ago, but if you're a longtime listener of this podcast if there are any of you well done, because I'd be really bored by you'll know that I'm not a big fan of backlink building anymore. I think it's dated. I think Google is catching on to it. We know Google's catching on to it. Every single Google algorithm update shows that backlinks are valued less and less. So there's no point knowing what your competitors are doing.
Speaker 1:But what you do want to know is how your own backlinks are going, because I'm all about brand building these days, brand which means digital PR. So when I'm talking about digital PR. I'm talking about getting your name in the local paper, getting your name, getting your website in editorial websites as well. A bit harder to do if you're a PR professional, probably not as hard, but, if you know, if you're not a PR professional, then let's focus on local small business websites or local small business papers or papers, local industry websites, that kind of thing. I want to be seeing. Those kind of backlinks Doesn't really matter what your competitors are doing these days, because backlinks just aren't what they are. Focus on getting good quality mentions across the web. Build your brand on social media as well, because social signals, aka how you're doing on social platforms, is also really important for SEO.
Speaker 1:So I do like to use the backlinks tool on Google Search Console, again on that left-hand bar. I just scroll down and you'll see a links button, click the links, and when I'm talking about backlinks, I'm talking about external links. Okay, that's what the word is external links and I can see here the top linking sites. So these are my backlinks, and then I can click onto the backlinks, each one, and it'll show me which page on my website I've got a link from isn't that cool? And then it also shows me the anchor text of those backlinks, which is amazing. This is exactly what all the fancy tools do, but this is showing me it for free.
Speaker 1:It's also a great tool for internal linking. Now, I think we've covered internal linking a couple times, but maybe we do need to do a proper session on it, because it is really important. Internal linking is when you're linking from one page in your website to another page on your website no external links involved to other websites and internal linking is a great way to show Google hey, we keep mentioning this particular page on my website because it's really important. And also each time you link to the website and whatever anchor text you use aka anchor text is so, say, click here, and then that's where you put the link. That's the anchor text click here, here. And I recommend not using click here. Instead, use something that describes the page you're linking to. So, for instance, read you, we've got a great guide on how to pot monstera plants here, and then I put how to pot monstera plants as my anchor text, and so internal linking is really useful tool, but sometimes it can get a bit top heavy for one page or you might think we've done.
Speaker 1:Internal linking is really useful tool, but sometimes it can get a bit top heavy for one page or you might think we've done internal linking, but actually when you then go review on google search console, the internal linking is common. I can see here that for this particular website they've got way too many links on one particular page and I probably need to balance that out because that's not their only focus page. Um, often you'll find as well, people go heavy on internally linking to the contact us or book us page now, but actually for SEO I'd rather be linking to the home page, for instance. But just like that on Google Search Console, they're my favorite favorite tools. I know, you know, obviously Google SEO experts are gonna be talking all about the technical SEO stuff, speed stuff, like that. As I always say, if you're built on WordPress, if you're built in Squarespace, wix or whatever, chances are, your technical issues aren't going to be that big for it to make a big enough difference for SEO. So just don't worry about it and if anyone tells you that it's a problem, get them to message me and I will happily shut them down on Instagram. I sound like a big sister there.
Speaker 1:Okay, moving on, my next favorite tool for free SEO is probably going to be for keyword research, and there's a couple here. I love Google Ad Planner, and people think you have to pay or be having a paid campaign to use Google App planner. That's not true, and actually, if you choose to do my course online, which teaches you exactly how to optimize your website using the exact strategies that I use with my clients and also then provides you with the SEO strategy but if you do that course, it teaches you exactly how to use Google App planner for free, which is essentially like using one of the best keyword research tools for free. And keyword research is always really important for any time you're creating a new website, creating new content on your website, creating new blog content or maybe even optimizing an existing page. Keyword research is one of the fundamental steps of SEO which you'll constantly be going have to doing. It's not something you do keyword research once. I get that some some clients. We've done the keyword research about a year ago and I'm like, well, a lot can change in a year, so we'll need to do it again. Um, yeah, so I love Google Ad Planner.
Speaker 1:Um, but if you're just getting started, then something like maybe Google Trends is also a really good tool and even just actually type, because on Google Trends you can see how a particular topic is doing over time. So, for instance, it's just good for you to get ideas on your blog content, like if I write a piece about this, is it becoming popular, is it a popular topic or is no one searching for this anymore over the last five years? So Google Trends is great beginner tool to start playing, messing around with sort of the idea of putting in a keyword and getting data about it, getting comfortable, because I think a lot of SEO is just getting comfortable with these new concepts of doing keyword research, you know, knowing how to read a page performance on Google Search Console. A lot of it is just experience. A good tool if you're only doing a few searches here and there that's completely free is SEMrush Magic Keyword Tool. I think it's just got to. If you sign up to their free account, you can then make sure you don't accidentally sign up to one of the very expensive plans. So sign up to a free account you can then I think you get a few searches a day, which is great to get started. Get started with again if you're just getting the idea of keyword search volume, keyword difficulty, those kinds of things. Um, yeah, so I do like semrush magic keyword tool as well, but I probably say my favorite keyword free keyword research tool is google ad planner.
Speaker 1:Now, um, I will also say I reckon you could do keyword research completely manually by typing in your idea into Google search bar, make sure you're in the right country you want to be searching for, and then like literally manually going through the results. Do I have a chance of ranking for this? And the best way to tell is when you put in your keyword what's coming up. Is it Amazon, is it Boots? Is it Bunnings? If you're in Australia? Is it Walmart if you're in the US? If there is those massive companies, sorry, love, you don't have a chance of ranking for that. What you want to be looking for in the key in the search results is websites like yours, aka small businesses, and preferably in your area as well.
Speaker 1:If those kind of results are coming up, then yes, go for it. Start trying to rank for that keyword. Use that keyword as the base for whichever page you're ranking for. Also, side note on keywords, I see a lot of people thinking that one keyword per page and, like I spoke about my top SEO mistakes. That's not how it is. When I say one keyword, for instance, noise cancelling headphones, that page would also rank for noise reduction, headphones, best headphones for keeping out noise, headphones that I can sleep in, I don't know. Yeah, all kind of synonyms and related keywords, a content cluster, quote, unquote I hate that term. Just sort of the same similar words that mean the same thing essentially. So your one page has lots of different keywords, but all those keywords will be related.
Speaker 1:So, yes, now this is a little secret tool that I love for no, if you're really stuck with SEO, you're feeling really overwhelmed. I definitely recommend you check out my course because it taught you. By the end of it, you'll have a completely optimized website, no questions asked, the exact strategy that I use on clients. But if you're not feeling as overwhelmed as that, then I'd recommend Ahrefs search bar tool, and this tool is great because there's a free version, a paid version, just the free version. What you can do is click onto a competitors website and then click on the on the logo in the search bar for this tool once you've downloaded it, and it will show you what that competitor is using as their meta title and as their H1 title and as their meta description and also all the other headings, so it gives you a great idea of how to essentially copy their SEO optimization for that page. Obviously, you know, take this with a pinch of salt, don't actually copy their exact meta title, their exact meta script and their exact H1. Like that would just be silly. But it's a great way to get started. If you've got no idea what a good meta title looks like, you can look at what your competitors are doing with this tool and get a goodish idea. Are doing with this tool and get a goodish idea and that, wow, I've actually gone.
Speaker 1:I wanted to talk about briefly Screaming Frog, which, if you consider yourself, you know you really enjoy tech stuff and you enjoy learning new tools and you do want to learn more about technical SEO, then Screaming Frog is a great place to start. There's lots of free resources out there on how to use it. But Screaming Frog is essentially a website crawler, a page crawler, and it will just take so much data from your website that then, if you've got the tutors, the tutorials on how to use it and what you're looking for, it can be a really interesting tool to use. But I definitely say that's for more. You know, intermediate to advanced seos, so please don't stress about that.
Speaker 1:But, um, yeah, that's all there is for today. Actually, um, as always, make sure you check out my course. If you're sick of seo and just want to get it over and done with um, that'll take care of it for you. You can also check out my free resources as well on the website, the theplansuccesscom, and also make sure you follow me at theplansuccess on Instagram. If you've got any questions as well about the course, hit me up there. Okay, that's all for today. Thank you so much.
