I don’t care much about SEO, should you?
Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask me about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and if I can help them with it. Other than making referrals, and having guests on, like Matt Campbell and Brian Lawrence, I don’t pay much attention to SEO. Why? Because I’m not trying to get more business through searches, other than searches specifically for me, that is. Should you be paying attention to SEO for your site? Yes. How much time, attention and money should you be spending? That’s a different question. For many of you, the answer is a lot less than you’re spending now.
Listen to this new 12-minute episode to see if you should be spending more or less time, attention and money on your SEO.
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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– I don’t care much about SEO. Should you? There’s always a lot of talk and controversy over SEO, search engine optimization. I’ve actually done some episodes on this. I had Matt Campbell on who’s an expert on it, talking about it. And when I’m speaking to people, I very often tell them, “I don’t pay a lot of attention to SEO.” Yeah, I had Matt and Brian Lawrence, my good friend who works with websites, go through my site and do SEO, optimized the site and my title tags and my meta-tags and all these other technical mumbo jumbo stuff behind the scenes, but that’s it, I’m done. I don’t pay a lot of attention to it because SEO, search engine optimization, means you are optimizing your website to be found in searches. The only thing I really care about my site being found in searches is when people are looking for me, specifically for me, not for somebody like me, not for somebody who does something that resembles something that looks like something that I do, specifically for me.
So if you Google Alan Berg and any other word that relates to what I do, business, weddings, events, sales, website reviews, anything like that, I’m going to come up and the whole page is me. That’s really not SEO, search engine optimization, because you were looking for me. What most people are looking for when they’re doing search engine optimization is if someone searches for someone in your area that does something like what you do that you will come up. For instance, wedding venue in Cleveland, wedding photographer in Phoenix, right? Those type of things you want to come up in those results and that would be optimizing your site for the words and phrases that people use to find you that way. For me, I would like to be found by people who are already looking for me and that would be a better lead for me just like it would be a better lead for you. If they were looking specifically for your wedding videography company by name, or your DJ company, or you’re a planner, or your name as an officiant, that would be optimizing so that you would come up because we don’t use the Yellow Pages anymore. We actually would go to Google and search for you that way. That’s a much better lead than someone who’s looking for someone who does officiating of weddings in Washington State, right? Or in Seattle or in Portland, Oregon, right?
That is the difference. If you’re already getting good leads and enough leads through your advertising, that would be places like The Knot and Wedding Wire and Weddings Online and all those type of sites, you don’t need SEO, search engine optimization. As a matter of fact, I’ve said very often, and I’ll continue to say, that user experience design, so optimizing for the user experience, is much more important than SEO because everybody that comes to your website, whether they came through a search engine or whether they came through advertising or social media or any other source, or even if they just typed in your URL from your brochure or a business card or whatever, everybody is going to get the user experience. The only people that matter for search engine optimization are people that go to a search engine and then find you in that list there.
So is it worth your time? Is it worth your money to optimize your site? Well, just like what I did, I think you should have somebody go through your site and optimize it at least once just so that you have the main things down. Like if you look at the tabs in your web browser, what happens if you hover your mouse over it? Does it come up with anything or does it come up with some keywords in there? The photos that you put on your site when you’re loading a photo up, you shouldn’t load a photo up that’s 874625.jpeg because that’s not helping your search engine optimization at all, whereas if it had your company name in there or your industry, or like for me, Alan-Berg-CSP-wedding-business, right, and then 47652.jpeg, that would be better optimization because it includes keywords that somebody could be using to try to find me in those. It helps a little. These are incremental helps. What search engines care about is the words on the page because that’s what the people read. Years ago, you could fool the search engine more by having all of this code behind the scenes, but they weigh much more heavily to what the user is going to see because let’s face it, that’s what the user is going to use when they get there. They’re not going to use the code that’s hidden behind the page.
So SEO matters if you need to get more traffic from people that don’t already know you. Because if they know you, they’re going to search for you by name, which means yes, somebody who helps you optimize your site will make sure that your name is written in real text on your page, not just in your logo because your logo’s a picture, but actually be in words that the search engines can read. And then there’s other keywords and things that do matter if you go through at least once and take a look. But after that, do you need somebody to go through your site every month and optimize it? Again, if you’re looking to get a lot of business through search engines, then sure. But if you’re not, if you’re doing other things that are bringing you the traffic, then no, you don’t need to go through every month. What you do need to do is try to write to your audience. See, the best SEO, search engine optimization, is when someone is looking for someone like you and your site organically, just by nature of what you’ve written on your site answers the query that somebody did in the search engine, that’s the best optimization because you aren’t trying to fool anybody. You’re actually putting out good content and people who are looking for someone who writes content like that, they’re going to find you. And that’s why for me, I try to update my site so every new podcast, just like this one, the transcript, is on my website. I used to have it as a blog and now I have it as the transcript podcasts.
So all the words that I’m saying here, including SEO, including wedding business, all these words are going to be on my site. And every week, I’m adding new content. And Google loves new content. And it also loves long content because it’s got more good keywords in it. There’s a problem, right? Because long content on a phone isn’t necessarily great. Well, I know that most of you, most of my listeners, three-quarters according to my Google Analytics, are still looking on desktop. I also know that probably not a lot of people are going to my blog to read my podcast transcripts. That’s okay because Google is. And then if you were to go search for keywords based upon a topic like I don’t care about SEO, should you, that blog post which is my transcript might come up in the results there. So should you care about search engine optimization? I think you should care a little bit because I think it’s important to go through your site.
When I review websites, I don’t do technical SEO, but I will tell you, hey, how come you don’t write your name enough on here? Why you keep saying events instead of saying weddings? If you do weddings, say weddings, don’t say events. No one’s looking for an event photographer. If they’re looking for a wedding photographer, they’re looking for a wedding photographer so it should say that. So I’ll help a little bit with that. I’m reviewing a site more for the user experience, the calls to action, the dead ends where people are not converting and things like that. SEO is to get people to your website. So once again, if you’re not looking to get more traffic to your site through search engine specifically because you’re already getting enough traffic to your site from other sources, SEO really doesn’t come into play. And if they click through from social media, if they click through from The Knot or Wedding Wire or Guides for Brides or Easy Weddings, they’re not going to a search engine. The search engine doesn’t matter at all.
Now, it does matter to sites like Easy Weddings and Wedding Wire and The Knot and so forth because they are looking to get couples to their sites through that. But once they’re there and they find your storefront and then they go to your website, well, at that point, the search engine had nothing to do with that. So SEO doesn’t come into play at all. So this is why I say I really don’t care that much about SEO because for me, if I can fill my calendar with people who are looking for me, specifically for me, then I don’t need them to find me on search engines other than when they’re specifically looking for me. Now with search engines, you get what you ask. So if somebody searches for Alan Berg, you’re not just going to get me, you’re going to get everyone, and actually the one that comes up the highest is unfortunately a radio DJ who was killed in 1984 outside of his house in Denver, Colorado because he was outspoken liberal and there were some white supremacists that didn’t take kindly to him and they killed him.
So if you Google Alan Berg, you’re going to get him and you’re going to get me and you’ll probably get some other people below that. But if you Google Alan Berg wedding, Alan Berg wedding business, Alan Berg sales, Alan Berg websites, anything like that, the entire page is me, not just my site, but other sites that I’ve been mentioned on that have high ranking as well. So should you pay attention to SEO? Yeah, a little bit. Should you pay a lot of attention and a lot of money to it? That depends upon your goals. I can certainly help with that as a consultant. I do that with my clients. But should you care about that? Think about that before you invest a lot of time and money and really just brain power in SEO. If you’re not trying to get more people looking for someone who does something that looks like what you do, well, then SEO really doesn’t come into play. I hope that helps with at least a little bit of perspective.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
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