How much does SEO matter to a small business? How complicated is coming up with blogging topics? In this episode of the second season of the Launch With Words Podcast, Bridget is joined by writer Kitty Webb for an insightful conversation on why small businesses should put their audience first with their website content.

"Always think about your customer first." Kitty Webb

More Episodes

https://launch-with-words.castos.com/

Get the Launch With Words Plugin for free on WordPress

https://wordpress.org/plugins/launch-with-words/

Transcript

00:22 But first, a word from our sponsor.

Zencastr.

I use Zencastr because it takes the headache out of producing podcasts. Who has time to edit in Garage Band all day long?

Zencastr is an all-in-one podcast production suite that gives you studio quality audio and video without needing all the technical know-how.

It records each guest locally, then uploads crystal clear audio tracks right into the dashboard so you have high-quality raw materials to work with. And then they run the production -- and TRANSCRIPTS.

With my promotional code, Zencaster will give you 30% off for 3 months
of their professional plan (the one I use).

Plus, the hobbyist accounts are always free.

So, what have you got to lose? You only have time to gain.

zen.ai/launchwithwords0

The Promo Code is LaunchWithWords0

That's Launch With Words 0 no spaces.

02:23 .25
Bridget Willard
Hey hey it's season 2 episode 5 with Kitty Webb Webb -- one of my favorite people on the planet: SEO, writer, dancer. All the things.

02:34 .62
Kitty Webb
All the things.

02:39 .90
Bridget Willard
So We're talking to small business owners, Kitty Webb, and like to me everything I know about you makes SEO so easy like it's not really that hard. Like what are some of your like top-of-mind tips to small business owners who are writing their own content?

02:58 .29
Kitty Webb
Well first of all, you're not writing for Google you're writing for people. Google is a tool that is trying to connect actual human beings with the information that they want to find and it gets better and better at that as time goes on so you see a lot of these trends in SEO. And everybody's talking about things like keyword density and neural networks and now they're like looking at different keyword categories and you look at Wikipedia and then you look at the subcategories in the Wikipedia category to make sure that you have your internal linking. None of that is necessary because all of that has to do with Google trying to find ways to connect actual human beings with the answers that they want. And it gets better and better and if that's what you're focused on then you really don't have to worry about all those complexities of SEO. Um, honestly, that really only comes into play when you're in the corporate SEO category and it's hyper-competitive and you're competing against Walmart or Petco or something like that, you know, which I've done. And that's a different ball game. But if you are you know a roofing company a contractor, a dentist. Um Google's not going to put you up against dentistry.com. I assume that's a thing. Ah, it's.

04:05 .44
Bridget Willard
It should be.

04:09 .51
Kitty Webb
It probably is and if it's not I'm sure the domain is like a hundred thousand dollars

04:11 .38
Bridget Willard
Right? I mean that's the thing is we hear about these giant eCommerce stores and then we think we had to compete with that. We don't even have to compete with that. We just have to compete with ourselves and our other small businesses.

04:26 .14
Kitty Webb
And the truth is that SEO is such a small part of small business strategy at this point. My corporate job right now, Um I'm building their SEO strategy just knowing that that's not how people find us. Nobody is Googling what we do because they're at a different phase. And maybe that's really the key where to start with SEO is understanding how people are finding you and what they want from you. Um, because if they don't know that you exist they're not looking for you yet.

04:47 .97
Bridget Willard
Yeah. Yes, I mean your industry, especially if your your industry is like not really known to them. I always talk to people and they go, "what I didn't know that was a choice?" So of course I wouldn't be looking for a laser vacuum.

05:05 .33
Kitty Webb
Hear that.

05:11 .58
Bridget Willard
You know, but my friend saw it on Tiktok and then she bought it and I saw it and you can't unsee the dust that you regular vacuum. You cannot unsee that. But I didn't know it existed. So I would never type in "laser vacuum."

05:17 .44
Kitty Webb
Um, yeah, true sorry.

05:24 .23
Kitty Webb
Yeah I mean I've been in content marketing since before it was called content marketing. And way back in the day when I was starting my career, people weren't looking for that because they didn't know they needed it. But they did know they had a problem. And the key to connecting with them was understanding what they were looking for.

05:28 .50
Bridget Willard
Um, yeah.

05:41 .69
Kitty Webb
They weren't looking for a content marketer. They weren't looking for SEO they had never heard of it. What they were looking for was "my website sucks, how do I fix it?" And that's kind of the key is understanding why does somebody want to find me? do they want to find me? So I want them to find me, right?

05:50 .25
Bridget Willard
Aha yeah.

06:01 .40
Kitty Webb
And the things that I know are great about me and or my selling points are not necessarily the things that attract people in the first place. If you're doing inbound marketing, you're you're putting out the fishing net. You're saying this is the bait that the fish like and then once they're i --n once they're in my tank, in my net -- then I can talk to them about these other things.

06:16 .71
Bridget Willard
Yeah.

06:19 .33
Kitty Webb
Show them this beautiful wide world of a lovely aquarium that they didn't even know existed that they want to live in.

06:23 .72
Bridget Willard
Right? Yeah, and so when they're saying my website sucks. What do you think that they are fixating on these small businesses? Yeah.

06:34 .91
Kitty Webb
I think the trick there is that they don't know what the problem is. Right now where my boyfriend and I are are taking on some projects together. He's a web developer and I do all the other stuff that's not code and we're building websites for dancers and 1 of the dancers is building a entire language.

06:45 .65
Bridget Willard
Cool.

06:54 .55
Kitty Webb
Ah, like an actual physical language almost like sign language in dance and he wants to eventually register it with WHO as an official language. Um, but he wants to build this curriculum and and spread it out to the world. So he wants to reach people who want to learn how to dance and want it to be easier than the way that West Coast Swing is usually taught. It's a very complex dance. It's not like ballroom.

06:55 .92
Bridget Willard
Oh cool.

07:13 .30
Kitty Webb
It's not like put your feet here and then you're doing the dance. It's very much in the communication. So understanding how to teach that is something um that he needs to express. And it's brand new. Nobody is looking for this yet. Um, and then the other side of that is he wants people to teach it and teachers who are really frustrated and saying, you know,

07:27 .22
Bridget Willard
Yeah.

07:32 .72
Kitty Webb
"I'm losing a lot of students. I'm not getting people to stick around very long because this is very hard." It's an answer for them because this is the way that you can teach it and describe it in such a way that it does make sense on levels and to build a website for him. The first step was he was like I I have no idea where to start I don't know. How to get this in front of people? I don't have the budget to get this in front of people. And I think that I'm probably going to come up with some resistance because the people that really are my target have these ideas already and I'm telling them the things that you know about what you're doing are wrong and there's a lot of resistance. So the answer for him was.

08:05 .40
Bridget Willard
Yeah.

08:11 .40
Kitty Webb
What What are they frustrated about? And what they're frustrated about is I have new students and nobody sticks around. And then what the students are frustrated about is I Want to do this dance because it looks so cool, but it's too hard to get started. Like I feel like I'm never going to get there. And both of those are the same core Problem. So being able to talk to them on that level of Okay, what are the people looking for? What what his problem is is he saying I don't know what people want from me and most of the people I talk to say they don't want me but they really do. I can solve their problem