SEO Q+A & Benefits of SEO Optimization w/ Laura Litwiller

There are so many benefits to business owners who take the time to optimize their website SEO strategy! It can help them spend less time on social media, attract more ideal clients, grow their email list—the list goes on & on. And that’s exactly why I want to introduce you to Laura Litwiller! She’s a Career Coach for Teachers and one of my recent SEO clients. In this conversation, you’ll hear why Laura decided it was time to improve her SEO, what she learned about keyword research, & how things look just 3 months later! Then Laura turns the tables & asks me questions about SEO!

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Transcript

0:04

Hello and welcome back to the Basic V podcast. I have a really special guest here today. I've got one of my clients, Laura Litweiler, which I've been saying her name wrong the entire time we've worked together. So I finally got it right at the important level. You got it. Yes. We're going to be talking all about, you know, insights into our work together, as well as some SEO Q&A. Because I love bringing these on. You all tell me that you love hearing them, so we're going to do that toward the end. But before I officially bring her on, let me introduce you to Laura. Laura Litwiler is a career transformation coach for teachers feeling stuck in the classroom or lost in their career through one to one coaching and her online course and community Teachers at a Crossroads, she helps teachers make confident choices about their career that align with their strengths, values, and what they want most in their life. Laura, I'm so happy to have you here. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yay. Of course. Okay, so I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everyone when they come on the podcast. Remember, there's no wrong answers. So here you go. Which is the most important for sales? SEO storytelling or social proof? SEO, storytelling or social proof? Well, for me right now, I would say it's SEO because not enough people know about me. And so I'm trying to be on more people's radar. So the SEO gets them to me, which then allows for the possibility of a sale. And so that feels really important right now. But once they get to me, I think it's the storytelling and how I talk about the course or my one on one coaching. Yeah, I love that answer because it really does. I mean, SEO is how we get people to us, whether we realize it or not. So that's a perfect segue into what we did. So you came into my world earlier this year and you signed on for an SEO packet, which I'm also switching the name a little bit to SEO Optimization. But what you got was an SEO audit where we looked at really what was going on with your website SEO at that point. What were some issues that were happening and how could we fix them? And then we did keyword research, you got some content ideas, and we created SEO strategies for some different pages on your website. So I guess if we go all the way back there. One question I'm curious about is why were you interested in looking into SEO? Well, I wanted to be more visible and I wanted people to be able to Find me. And I wasn't really sure how to do that, but SEO really appealed to me because I could focus on that instead of social media, which is the main thing. I have never been somebody who personally is on social media that much. And when I went onto it for my business, I just felt like I was always forcing myself to do it and forcing myself to get in there and trying to figure out how to make things look snappy and appealing and grab people's attention and. And I just found myself over and over being like, oh, I gotta go post on LinkedIn. And I decided that I wanted to limit my social media, and I can't not do any marketing. Right. And so one of the things that I thought was, well, maybe SEO, because I know teachers are after a bad day, they're hopping online and they're searching around for things like, you know, career alternatives for teachers or what are my strengths as a teacher or should I quit teaching or not? And it felt like there are some pretty clear questions that they have or some pretty clear things that they're looking for, like career coach for teachers, you know, and so I thought if I really optimize my SEO, then I would pop up when those teachers are having a bad day and their. Their first instinct is to go get answers and resources and support. Support online. Yeah. One thing I thought was really, really cool about working with you, and I find that when clients come to me and they have these attributes, SEO just works a little bit better for them. But you had such a clear vision of who your ideal client is. Even like, what you're explaining to us is, this is what they're doing. This is what their day looks like. This is where they're going. These are the types of things they're looking for. And you were really clear on all of that, which made my job much easier. And then it made the results that we came up with for the SEO strategy simple. It was very clear. It was very simple. It was very aligned with who it was that you wanted to find you. Yeah. And I feel like that also sometimes made it a little hard for me because I feel like my niche is a little different than what the teachers are actually searching for. So the teachers, you know, they might be searching, like, resume for teachers or, you know, how do I stand out in my job search or things like that. And my niche is more on helping teachers get clarity about what they want next and what they want to do. And do they want to quit teaching, and if so, what's their next step? Where do they want to head which career path. And so it felt challenging sometimes to sort of balance that, like, well, but I don't want to work with people who are just gung ho in the job search. Right. But a lot of times that's where people are googling things that are related to the job search because that's what they think is the first step when they're considering a change. And so I feel like sometimes I would get stuck. Right. And I remember some back and forth with you in the Google Docs, like, well, I don't want people coming to me for job search. I don't want people coming to me to work on their resume. And you're sort of consistent response was like, well, let's get them to you first. And then they can see if the message resonates and they can see if the way that you approach it is a way that will work for them or that they're interested in. And so I feel like I do have a clear sense of who my client is and sometimes I just have to remember that first I have to get the people to me and then they can sort of filter themselves out based on what they're really looking for. Yeah, and that's a really good point because I do remember going back and forth in the comments with you in the Google Doc about, you know, one of your competitors that came. And I say that with like air quotes, but one of the competitor websites that came up was very clear that it was like, okay, you're out of teaching. You know, you're out of teaching. Here's how we, you know, work with that. Like, you're saying you had a unique take on it. Of, okay, maybe you want to be out of teaching. Maybe you just want to renegotiate some things and find a different place where you're happy or a different grade or a different whatever, fill in the blank. And that is such a good point of what they're searching for and what they really want. They may not know that there's someone like you out there who can help them figure out, oh, I can stay in teaching. I, you know, I used to love it. Maybe you can help me find a way to fall back in love with it and really enjoy where I'm at and what I'm doing. So that is such an awesome point. I'm glad that you brought that up because what people are looking for and the options that they have, they may not know exactly what to type in to land on your page. And if you're hearing this, you're not alone. That's not some, you know, weird, crazy thing to even be wondering. And I'm also glad that you pointed out. Yeah, my response was consistent because I'm like, these are the things that they're looking for. And it was really clear the types of phrases or questions that they were typing in. And I love doing this with clients, but you were like, what about this? So I would try it, I would go and I would research it. And I'm like, yeah, it's really not bringing anything up. So we got really clear on, okay, these are the things that they're typing in. And they just may not know that there's someone like you out there who can help them stay in teaching and be happy again. Yeah, it feels like my urge is to want to share my message, you know, and like, I do it different and this is how I do it. And I want to share that so bad. But then I have to step out of what I want to share and really think about what their looking for and what their questions are. And that can be hard because when you think about how much time you spend on your website, like thinking about your message and what you're communicating and what's going to resonate with them and you don't have to dump that. Right. But it is like a stepping out of it for a little bit and really just getting into their mind and thinking about their very specific questions that they have at 6pm on a Friday after a terrible week. They're not like, how could I get clarity in my career? I mean, maybe some people do, but it's like my interpretation of their questions does not work. It has to be the actual questions that they're typing or the actual words that they're looking for. Right? Yeah, that's another great point because I can see things about SEO. I can understand what you're getting at with your question. Maybe like at a conversation that we were having, but you're asking it in a really specific way. So we do really have to get out of our own way, especially when it comes to SEO. And that's why I have a start with social proof. What are your people actually saying? And you had great social proof to work with. What are your people actually saying? What are they looking for? What are the results that really made a difference in their life? And what might other people then therefore be looking for as well? Right. What would you say was the most challenging part about SEO? I think it was getting out of my own way in this example. And what else? I think just Understanding and having patience with the time that it takes too, you know, to realize that this is a slow roll and it. It will catch fire more and more as it goes on. But honestly, the nitty gritty of, like, changing the content and updating meta tags and meta descriptions and all of that, it felt good to, like, get in there and think, okay, what are they going to be most excited to read when they, you know, land on this page? That, and I show up. And it felt really good to just be like, okay, I'm getting more into their head and I'm reaching them where they're at. Yeah, I love hearing that. And the way that I designed this packet especially, and really any of my work is that I want it to be so simple where it's copy, paste. Like, I give you the Google Doc, and you just copy and paste it over onto your website, save it, and then you let it go to work. Yeah. So we got most of the stuff plugged into your site. I was looking. I think it was around June that you got stuff plugged into your site. Yeah, that sounds right. And so we're in September. And you've had a lot of good wins, which I discovered. But I'm curious from your perspective, just like, how has it felt? Have you noticed anything working for you when it comes to SEO? Yeah. One of the main things is I have this quiz on my website, and it used to be called should I Stay or Should I Go? Which is it's for teachers who are wondering, should I leave the classroom or should I not? But one of the things, the very concrete things that you help me with is rethinking the title of the quiz, because teachers aren't typing in Should I Stay or Should I Go? They're typing in, like, should I quit teaching? And so that's what we named the quiz. And I've seen over time, just, like, such a good, consistent flow of people taking the quiz since we made the change. Yeah. And so for me, I mean, I'm getting probably like 10 people a week who are coming into my newsletter because they've taken the quiz and then opted into my email and my email newsletter. And for me, that's really good. And so just having that consistent inflow of people feels really good. Number one, like, just, like, I'm building my list and I'm reaching more people. But also, it's just incredible to see how a shift in language can really make a huge difference. And so that, I would say, is my primary example of how SEO works. Well, I have this Blog post that was getting some traction before we started working together and because people were searching for something related to, like, trapped in teaching and stuck in teaching. And I was showing up as number one for that. Um, but now I just noticed that, like, the numbers of people reading it is, Is going up quite a bit and it's definitely my most read blog post. And that was another example to me of like, okay, SEO works because there's nothing else about that blog post that is particularly unique or special, but the fact that that many people are reading it is number one depressing because, you know, they're coming on and talking about feeling trapped in teaching or they're stuck and. But it helps me understand what they're thinking and how they're framing it. And so I would say those are two really big wins for me with SEO. That's exciting to hear about. And I was. I was giggling when you were talking about the quiz name, because I remember doing keyword research around that and I was like, oh, no. Everything that's coming up around should I stay or should I go is more relationship based. For example, if someone is looking into potentially getting a divorce or something like that. And so that is very obviously not your people. No, it might be. They might be related. They could be looking for something new. And both in relationship and work, they. Could, but you can't assist them with that part of things. So once I saw the other keyword, I was like, this, this has got to be the one. And sometimes that'll happen when I'm working with clients where it's just such a clear, this is the thing that we need to hammer, hammer down on with this particular blog or page or whatever it is. Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. You're getting about 10 people a week. That's really exciting for a quiz. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. All right, so I want to take a look at the SEO report that I sent to you. So when we started, you have all up arrows except for one which stayed the same, which is totally fine because again, it's only been about three months since we got everything plugged in. Industry standard is about three to six months to really see an uptick in SEO, really, quote, unquote, working for you. But you've got more traffic, substantially more traffic. So we started at an average of about 12 visits to your website per month, and now we're up to 44, which is really exciting. So definitely we know that blog post is pulling people in. In your quiz, your keywords went up massively. So we had 16 organic keywords that you were ranking for, and now you're up to 75. So, I mean, whoa. I guess I didn't take that close of a look. That's awesome. Yeah. So just changing the wording, putting out more content like blogs on your website, and really having all of those SEO titles, meta descriptions, really using those H1 headlines too. All of those things count toward helping Google and other search engines and people understand what you're about, who you can help, how you can help them, all of that good stuff. Um, and then there's domain authority. So that's basically, for anyone listening, that is basically your website's SEO report card. And the score is out of a hundred. I don't even think Google has a hundred. But you started at six and you're still at six, so that's okay. And that will continue to, you know, improve over time. The websites that are linking to you, you gained three more. So you were at four, now you're at seven. And your backlinks or the links coming from those websites also went up. You were at 11 and now you're at 15. So you're doing tremendous, especially after, like, just considering it's only been three months. Yeah, thanks. I think the backlinks one is where it's most challenging for me, but I've been trying more to have conversations with people who have their own audiences so that they can be linking back to me, writing more. I have a few places where I plan to. I haven't yet, but write blog posts for other blogs. That one's a little tricky, but I feel like that's really important. It's obviously really important, and I imagine, especially for my domain score or whatever it is, to have those backlinks so that they can really see me as a expert. I don't know why I did quotes because I am an expert. So I'm. It's. You're still getting used to it. It's a weird thing to say about ourselves, but, yeah, you are an expert, especially. I mean, yeah, you live and breathe this and you've already helped so many people with it. But yeah, just a quick note on the back links. You're doing the right thing. So when this podcast goes out, you're going to get a ton of backlinks to your website, so that's going to be really helpful. The guest blogging is also incredible for building backlinks. And for example, if you're, I don't know, let's say you work with Someone who has their own blog, one of your clients, and they write about working with you, that's also going to give you a backlink. So anytime that we get a link from some other site to our website, that counts. And that definitely helps your SEO score improve. We can also give ourselves backlinks, which is why I'm a big fan of your LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Instagram profile, anything like that. I don't like using the. What is it? Link tree or Bitly or anything like that. I just have a page on my website that's, you know, brittanyherzberg.com links and so that's what I use, because then I'm sending people from Instagram or threads or whatever back to my website. Okay, yeah. So you mean you're linking from your profile, for example, back to a certain page on your site? Yep. And that looks good because it looks like LinkedIn is linking to me. It looks like Instagram is linking to me. Yeah, yeah. So that'll just continue going up and up and up. So you've got the blogging I know you've talked about, even going on podcasts. So, yeah, even doing one thing, like one podcast gives you more than one backlink, which you'll see, too. It'll skyrocket. Okay, yeah. That's my goal for this. The next couple of months is to continue posting on my own blog, but also tweaking things from my own blog for other blogs. I think that's really wise. All right, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you. Do you have any questions for me? I do. So right now I call myself a career transformation coach for teachers. I think that the most important part is career coach teachers. Right. Like, the transformation part is probably more just like me sort of describing how I see myself. Maybe not. If I'm wrong, tell me. But I've been toying with the idea of changing my title to Career Clarity Coach, because I think, like, that word clarity, people just so want to have a clear direction, and they so want to, like, clear up the murkiness and the muckiness of the confusion they have about their career. So I think that that word really resonates with people. But again, they're not going to be Googling it necessarily. So I'm wondering if I'm just once again getting stuck in the whole, like, what they're searching versus what I think of myself and what message I want to portray, and if maybe it doesn't even matter what I call myself or if there is some value to changing My title. So any thoughts you have on that would be super helpful. So my thought always is, let me go check what the data says. Yeah. Career Transformation Coach, if I'm just, you know, boiling it down to those words. Yeah. Is searched by, on average, 10 people each month. Career Clarity Coach is actually searched on average by 30 people a month. So there could be some benefit to doing that. Yeah. And my other question that I always go back to is, are you hearing that from your clients? Yes. Like, I never hear them say they want to transform their career. Or I. I've heard them say in the social proof, like in testimonials, that it transformed their career. But I've also hear people saying for the course, for example, gave them more clarity. And I've talked to some of my clients about it after we worked together. And they are using the word clarity. They're using the word clarity, I think more than they're using the word transformation. But I don't know that they're really using either one of them that much. Right. Yeah. I agree that when they're searching for that, they're probably just primarily focused on career coach for teachers. But that swap, like I said, even just with that little search, 10 people a month versus 30 people a month, it could benefit you. My piece of advice on that, though, is when you go back and change things, make sure to change it in every spot where we said transformation. Just so that gives you that consistency throughout. Maybe I need to do a little bit of more audience research before I switch it all, because I also heard you say that it's not good to be constantly changing. Right. Language. So I want to make sure that if I switch it, I'm going to stick with it, at least for a while. So maybe I'll ask around a little bit and maybe send it out in an email newsletter and get people's feedback on it. I like that idea. You could also even play around with it by writing a blog post where you're talking specifically about Career Clarity Coach for teachers. Yeah. And just seeing which blog post gets more. Or just like noticing if that does get picked up pretty quickly. Right. And if you do have a lot of people visiting that. Right. I do think give yourself a month or two before swapping things out because you do want to have some. Like you said, you don't want to have the jumping around too. Too much. Yeah. And I still think that the stuff that you have in there is still working. I mean, obviously it's working. You've got people going to the various pages. But Maybe ask around, try the blog post, and then after a month or two, reevaluate from there. Yeah, okay. That's cool to hear, though. And I love that you're talking to your people. I love that you're asking them and having those conversations. Yeah, some. I should probably do it more, but I always have to remind myself that it's not just me tossing around this question in my head for four months. Right. It's talking to other people and getting their feedback and input because it just gives me so much more clarity. About. Pun intended. Yes. Pun completely intended about what they're thinking. But it's not necessarily my natural thing. My natural thing is to just, like, churn on it and think about it. And so I'm always trying to pull myself out and, like, who can help me with this? Where can I get more information? How could I ask my audience? Yeah, another thing, too, and we may have already talked about this. I can't honestly remember, but on your intake form or somewhere in the onboarding process, that would be another good thing to ask people as close to them finding you as possible of, like, what were you looking for? Or what support are you looking for? Because they may give you the answer right there. Right. I could just honestly look back through because they do fill out a little survey and there is a question about why they're reaching out. And maybe I could just look and see, are they using the word clarity? Are they using the word transformation? Yeah. Yeah. And if you already see a whole bunch with clarity, maybe you decide to change things in a month instead of a two or two and a half months. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do we have time for another question? We do. Okay. So in the report that you sent me, the SEO report, I noticed that I am showing up pretty consistently, pretty high up for life coach for teachers. And I guess my question is, what's up with that? Because I'm not a life coach. I don't talk about being a life coach anywhere on my website. I know I use the word life, what you want most for your life, things like that. But I'm just wondering sort of how these unintended SEO wins happen. You know, I. I do think that compared with other career coaches for teachers, I delve much more into who you are and what you want and where you're headed, and all of those are life questions. But I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on why that might be happening and if there's anything I should do with that. Yeah, I mean, if you were to start getting a Lot of inquiries about like, oh, do you do life coaching for teachers? Then I might reconsider some things. But we're always going to have just how you perfectly said it, unintended keywords that we end up showing up for. Okay. And it's largely, it's because of other words that are in the H1 titles in the SEO title and meta description in our copy even. And you do talk about, you know, what do you want for your life? So it's going to always be in your wording. A different example would be I show up very high for Akashic Records reading. So if you don't know what that is, it's. How do I even describe it? It's kind of like all the information in the universe about your various life paths and it gets a little bit woo woo, which is totally fine. I'm here for that. However, I don't help people with that. But I have a couple of blog posts that I wrote about working with my friend Donna, who's an Akashic Records reader, and they got picked up. And so what I'm doing with that, because I don't want to be found for that necessarily. I love that I'm being found and hopefully people are then going to Donna's website. But I don't want that word. I don't even want massage therapist to necessarily be something I'm ranking for. So I'm actually going to pull that blog, give it to Donna, and I need to figure out the workaround. At that point, that's where my brain just stopped because I was like, I can give this to her. It's obviously working. People will definitely search for it. They can find her. Right? So that's one thing that I'm doing. Do I think you need to take any drastic action? No, but like I said, if you start getting people asking you for services that you don't offer, then we might want to consider that. But another way to think about it too is this could be potentially a positive win because you're working with teachers with a very like, heavy focus on their life as a whole. Right. So they could come to you and, you know, discover services that they didn't realize were out there and go, oh my gosh, I would love to work with her. This, you know, hits the nail on the head. So it could be a positive. But if you start getting inquiries about things that you don't do and don't want to do, then we could maybe rethink some things. But you're never going to not talk about life in your right. Like, I know you, I know what you offer, I know who you help and how you help them. That's just not going to change. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's always going to be keywords that we don't necessarily want to rank for. And it's just like, okay, perfect question with this information, do I need to change anything or is this just going to, you know, keep showing up? Yeah. So far I haven't had any inquiries that are related to that. Okay. And I think I would love to work with people who want to see a career change as a very holistic thing that touches all points of their life. And so in a way, it's a positive unintended result. Yeah. Yeah. And this is case in point why you need to have a strategy behind your SEO, because otherwise you're just going to be given one. And I didn't realize that until I got into SEO and I was showing up for things. Like there were some not good words that I was showing up for because I was a massage therapist. And so I'll just let your all brains go where they're going to go because those are the types of things that I was showing up for. I didn't want to. However, I was also showing up for a massage therapist. Apex, North Carolina. Massage therapist for migraines. Things that I was already helping people with because I was being intentional with the copy I was putting on my website. But I made some, you know, cardinal air quote, sins of. There should only be one H1 on every page. And there were a few pages where I was like, this is cute. And I had like eight. Yeah. Yeah. So there are things like that that I was doing and I didn't realize it, but yeah, you're always going to have an SEO strategy whether or not you choose to have one. So you might as well help yourself, help the search engines, help other humans that you want to help find you. Yep. Makes sense. Those are great questions. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Make sure you give us the link to the quiz and then anything else that you want to share in case someone's listening and they're like, oh, I'm struggling with should I stay in teaching or should I go? Or I know of someone. Yeah, I think if you know of someone who just can't get any traction with that question and they feel really stuck with it and it's a constant back and forth, you know, should I quit or should I stay? Or if you know someone who knows they want to leave but they feel stuck because they don't know what else they could do. Teachers often get stuck in that place of feeling like they're not qualified or there's nothing else that would use their skill set. And there are many other things. And so if you know people who are in either one of those places, either they don't know if they want to leave or they know they want to leave and they don't know what's next, send them my way. I love it. I know you've got your website and then you said LinkedIn is the place you hang out, right? Yeah, I don't hang out a ton there because I try not to be on social too much, but. But yes, that is the place where I spend time when I'm on social. Perfect. I'll make sure that both of those are linked as well as your quiz. This was so fun. Thank you for joining me and sharing all of your wins and sharing about the process. It's been a blast working with you. Yeah, likewise. Thank you for all your help. Really appreciate it. Oh, of course. Yeah, you're welcome. Awesome. Well, I will catch you all next time. Bye.