April 26, 2025 • 24 mins
🎙️ I had an amazing time chatting with Rose Davidson on Talking with the Experts! 🚀
In this episode, I dove deep into expert SEO tips for 2025 — from 🔍 keyword research and 🆚 competitor analysis to 🔧 website optimization strategies that can help any business grow online without relying on paid ads.
We talked about why hashtags are basically the "SEO keywords" of social media 📱, how important it is to give your images smart filenames 🖼️, and why you should never blindly trust AI for keyword numbers (hint: it makes stuff up sometimes 🤖🙈).
I also shared some inside tips on:
- How to find high-traffic, low-competition keywords 🏆
- How to use free Google tools to crush SEO research 💥
- Why remarketing ads are a total game-changer for staying top-of-mind 🔁
- Why patience is the secret weapon for long-term SEO success ⏳
If you want to learn how to actually optimize your website for real traffic and future-proof your SEO strategy, this episode is packed with actionable advice you can start using today! 🚀
Catch the full conversation now — you won’t want to miss it! 🎧✨
#SEO #DigitalMarketing #SocialMediaMarketing #WebsiteOptimization #KeywordResearch #BusinessGrowth #SmallBusinessTips #SEO2025 #BrandonLeibowitz #TalkingWithTheExperts #SEOOptimizers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
With the Experts learnexpert SEO.
Tips for 2025 with BrandonLeibowitz.
Discover keyword research,competitor analysis and website
optimization strategiesin episode 571.
What do you want to try to find?
(00:20):
Like,keywords that are good for SEO
are going to be hashtagsfor social media.
So the hashtag is where you putthe pound sign in front of a
word and it becomesa keyword per se.
So you want to try to find goodkeywords that you want to use as
hashtags and incorporate thoseinto your content.
Make sure your images or videoshave file names that are
(00:41):
descriptive before you uploadthem to social media. Really,
really important.
And just making sure,depending on what platform
you're on,if you can write a title
like YouTube,make it a good title
for your video.
But every platform is different.
It's just trying to figure outhow to best optimize for the
space that you're given andtrying to look at your
competition and seeingwhat they're doing.
What type of keywords, imagery,videos,
(01:03):
what type of content are theyposting and trying to replicate
that and try to sprinkle inthose keywords to try to
maximize the reachof that content.
Talking with the Experts.
Welcome to Talkingwith the Experts.
This is where we discuss greatideas to take your business
(01:25):
to the next level.
How do we know these ideas work?
Well,it's because we're talking with
business owners who areusing these ideas.
Business owners who have yearsof experience and expertise.
All things Business by businessowners for business owners.
And now here is your host,Rose Davidson.
(01:48):
Hello.
Welcome to Talking with theExperts. I'm your host,
Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.
talking with the Experts is allabout business by business
owners for business owners.
You can find it on allpodcasting streaming platforms
and on YouTube.
And today my guest is BrandonLeibowitz and Brandon is going
(02:09):
to be discussing with us allthings SEO. Now we know,
we know with the advent ofAI and all those things,
sometimes our SEO needsa bit of a tweak.
So Bren is going to discuss withus how we can optimize our
websites and how strategies thatwe can use, how to use research,
keywords and techniques forcompetitor analysis. Brandon,
(02:33):
welcome to the podcast.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you for havingme on today.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizers and has done
so since 2007.
And he they are a digitalmarketing company that focus on
helping small and medium sizedbusinesses get more online
(02:53):
traffic which in turn convertsinto clients, sales and leads.
Brandon,tell me a little bit about why
SEO is so important. You know,a lot of people don't think in
this day and age with AI andstuff that SEO is important,
but, you know, in my mind,it still is.
So SEO is ranking websiteson search engines.
(03:16):
And it doesn't matterwhere you search.
If you're searching on Google,bing, Facebook, Twitter, Yo,
TripAdvisor, chat, GBT,anywhere where you're
searching Amazon,there's ways to optimize and try
to make you rank higher withoutspending money on paid ads.
Which is ultimate goal is tryingto make sure that you show up in
(03:36):
those free searches on whateverplatform you're searching on.
It doesn't may haveto be Google.
It could be anywhere thatyou're able to search.
There are ways to optimize andmake sure that you Rank higher.
And AI is. ChatGPT is a big one.
Chat GPT is open,owned by OpenAI,
which is really Bing.
So it's just Bing putting thesearch results in a new format
(03:58):
for people to read.
But you still have to optimizeif you want to show up in AI or
Google or Amazon or whateverplatform that you're
trying to rank for.
So why is SEO so importantfor website conversion?
SEO is going to getyou free traffic.
SEO doesn't lead to conversions,but it leads to targeted
traffic.
And once people getto your website,
(04:18):
then you got to make sure youoptimize your website for
those conversions,which is called conversion
rate optimization.
But SEO is really trying to makesure that when people search it,
search wherever they'researching,
that you show up and you capturethat targeted traffic.
And then once they getto your website,
then you got to work on how tomake sure that every visitor
then converts into a sale orlead or phone call or whatever
(04:40):
that conversion goal is thatyou're trying to focus on.
So I guess you know,people putting, you know,
keywords into their website and,you know,
in the back end of their pageand, and all that. You know,
how, how do you use SEO?
How do you find those, you know,focus keywords that is so
(05:01):
important when building theback end of your page.
I try to look at my competitionfirst and start from there.
So I'll go into Google,search for my keywords,
see who ranks on that firstpage of Google,
and look at that blueclickable link,
which is called theSEO title tag.
That's where everybody isputting their keywords.
(05:23):
And I could quickly look at mycompetition and see what
keywords are they using.
And write them down.
And what I want to do is make abig list of keywords and then
use tools like the GoogleKeyword Planner to figure out
how many people actually searchfor that keyword every single
month. But first,I like to try to spy my
competition and getideas from them.
Because if someone's onpage one of Google,
(05:43):
they probably did some keywordresearch. Hopefully,
maybe they just got lucky.
But in general,most of those websites probably
did some keyword research andyou can get ideas and see is
everyone using a singularor plural or a synonym?
And if you see everyone,if you're trying to rank for a
keyword and you see everyone'susing a plural,
maybe the plural mightbe a better one.
But you still need to checkusing the Keyword planner from
(06:05):
Google to really see how manypeople search for that keyword
every single month.
Like one of my clients orpersonal injury lawyer,
and they want to rank forpersonal injury lawyers,
which gets I think 20,000searches a month in Los Angeles,
where I live.
But personal injury LawyerSingular gets 200,000 searches
every single month.
Just by removing thatone letter,
(06:26):
you're going to get 10times more searches.
That's why you got todo keyword research,
because you could guess andyou might get it right,
but you also might get it wrong.
And it only takes a few minutesto do that research.
Quite often I I,I use ChatGPT to, you know,
get those focus keywords for theback end of the website
to do the SEO.
Yeah Is it better to use them oris it better to use the
(06:50):
Google platform?
It depends how you're doingkeyword research.
If you just want list ofkeywords and Chat GPT is okay.
But if you want to know how manypeople search for that keyword
every single month,Chat GPT is going to give you
the complete wrong numbers.
Like their numbers don'teven match up close.
And that's the thing with AI.
It doesn't know the rightanswer a lot of times.
(07:11):
And if it doesn'tknow the answer,
it's going to make it up andit's not going to tell you
that it's making it up.
So I would probably avoid doingkeyword research on Chat GPT or
any AI for the time beingbecause it's just so
far inaccurate.
And using the Google KeywordPlanner takes the same amount
of time as using Chat GPT.
Right, that,that's that's a good
(07:32):
tip because, yeah,I've been using it and using
that and they ask,I ask for A focus keyword.
And you're right,it doesn't give me the amount of
searches for that particularfocus keyword at all. So yeah,
I think I might start using theGoogle Planner instead and
find out, you know,what I'm doing wrong. Because,
I mean,when I go and search for my
(07:52):
page, it comes up automatically,but I don't know exactly what
page it's on in Google.
So just quietly,how can you find out what
page you're on?
What do you mean?
Where you rank in Google.
So if you put,say if I put my website
URL into the,into the search bar
(08:12):
and it comes up,how do I know where my
page ranks in Google?
Obviously,you have to just search.
So if you want to see whatposition you're in,
you're gonna have to searchand see where you rank.
So if you're ranking for likecar mechanic near me,
you could just search.
And you have to go through allthose pages of Google to
see where you're at.
(08:33):
But usually I want to go pastpage three if you want to,
but there's tools that will letyou check and Scan to page 10 to
see what position you're in forthose different keywords.
I wonder if I must be onnearly page one then,
because I don't haveto search very far.
Yeah,but anytime it's your company
name, that's not really.
We want to rank for keywordsthat don't have your company
name. Non brand keywords.
(08:54):
Because anything withyour company name,
you're always goingto rank for that.
But what you want to do andanyone searching for
your company,they already know who you are.
You want to show up for newsearches of people that don't
know who you are.
And that's where you want todo unbranded searches.
Keywords that don't mention yourbrand name or a company name or
your name where it's justmentioning the services only.
And that's going to getyou that new traffic.
(09:15):
Oh, I'll do that. I'll go,I'll go and do that after this
interview and see how we go.
Branda,what are some really great SEO
strategies that we canwork on for 2025?
PlanningI'd say adding more text to your
website is something thatdoesn't require coding and is
easy enough for everyone to do.
Is Google feeds off text.
The more text you have on everysingle page on your website,
(09:39):
the easier it is for the searchengines to read and really know
what that page is about.
And you have to Put text onevery single page has to
be original content.
Google doesn't care who writesit anymore, AI or people,
as long as it's accurate.
Because again,AI is not accurate.
So if you just copyand paste from AI,
it might do more harm than good.
But if you go in and tweak andedit it, that's perfectly fine.
(10:02):
But you need to add text onevery single page. It is really,
really important.
Doing that alone will almostguarantee you'll get
more traffic.
So you know, in,in our marketing plans,
how can we, you know,add SEO into, you know,
our marketing strategy?
For your marketing strategy,you just want to try to figure
(10:23):
out who your audience is andwhere they are and are they
going to be on Google searchingor they're on Google,
where are they?
Maybe they're on social mediaand you can optimize for social
media or if they're on adirectory or like TripAdvisor or
Yelp or something like that,you can optimize for that and
just trying to understandwho your audience is,
where are they and how do I getin front of them at
(10:44):
the right moment?
That's really the most importantthing is where are they and how
do I get myself in front of themwhen they're actively looking
for my product or service?
That's where sometimes you justhave to take a step
back and think,if you were looking for your
product or service,where would you go?
And then you kind of just pieceit together and try to test and
see what works and push moretime and money into what's
(11:05):
working and pull money and timeaway from what's not working.
Yeah, I guess you know,as we've said,
SEO is a really important partof building a website.
You know,how can we use the research
tools and to, you know, betterget those important keywords
(11:28):
that we need to have.
Yeah, you want to look at thosekeyword research tools that
I was talking about,like the Google Keyword Planner
and you put your keyword inthere and it'll show you how
many people search for yourkeyword every single month.
So then you go for the highsearch volume keywords.
But just because it's a highsearch volume keyword doesn't
always mean it's the bestbecause it probably means it's
(11:48):
very, very competitive.
The more competitivethe keyword is,
the more time it's goingto take to rank.
That's where you just go in andsearch that keyword that you
think you want to rank for onGoogle and see who ranks on
that first page of Google.
And if it's a bunch of bigcorporations and you're
just a startup,might have to skip that keyword.
But if it's a bunch of small ormedium sized websites and you're
a startup, go for that keyword.
(12:10):
But that's where you have to goin and dive in and really take
the time to find those lowcompetition keywords that
have good search volume.
And what is it? You know,can you explain to me you know
in the keyword search it tellsyou how many clicks there are,
but there's othernumbers in that sort of line.
(12:33):
You know, that some people don'tunderstand. So you've got,
you know, clicks perconversion or clicks per
something or other.
I don't know what that,what exactly that it means.
Can you explain to me youknow what those numbers,
all those numbers mean?
When you're lookingfor a keyword, it.
Depends where you're looking.
Every platform is goingto be different.
(12:54):
If you're just looking at theGoogle Keyword Planner,
it's going to show you the,how many people search for that
keyword every single month.
The competition,it's going to show you the cost.
If you want to run paid ads,it'll show you how much
each click will be.
But it depends what platformyou're on.
If you're on a differentthird party tool,
it might show you differentdata points.
(13:15):
But Google Keyword Planner isgoing to show you competition,
search volume,cost per click and the monthly
searches year over year,how it's changed,
if it's increased or decreased.
Right, okay,so social media marketing SEO
is quite important in that.
I understand that.
(13:35):
And how can we use SEO in oursocial media marketing?
Well,you want to try to find like
keywords that are good for SEOare going to be hashtags
for social media.
So the hashtag is where you putthe pound sign in front of a
word and it becomesa keyword per se.
So you want to try to find goodkeywords that you want to use as
(13:58):
hashtags and incorporate thoseinto your content.
Make sure your images or videoshave file names that are
descriptive before you uploadthem to social media. Really,
really important.
And just making sure,depending on what platform
you're on,if you can write a title
like YouTube,making a good title
for your video.
But every platform is different.
It's just trying to figure outhow to best optimize for the
(14:19):
space that you're given andtrying to look at your
competition and seeingwhat are you doing,
what type of keywords,imagery videos,
what type of content are theyposting and trying to replicate
that and trying to sprinkle inthose keywords to try to
maximize the reachof that content.
That's really important that wedo our keyword research and just
don't rely on AI to, you know,to spit out the hashtags or the
(14:42):
keywords that we're looking for.
So Actually sitting down anddoing that research is
really important,is what you're saying.
AI is a, okay starting point,but to really get the numbers,
you could ask AI to giveyou the numbers,
but they're going tobe completely off.
So that's where it's okay toget some keyword ideas.
But if you want to know thedata points, the numbers,
(15:03):
you gotta use a real tool likethe Keyword Planner.
Yeah.
So now it'll change,but right now AI is just full
of those inaccuracies.
And we don't want to putsomething out and think that's
good and it's really not good.
And AI is doing,doing those AI hallucinations
and it's not telling youthat it's making it up,
which is really weird.
I feel like if it doesn't know,just tell us. You don't know,
(15:24):
don't make something up becausethen a lot of people are just
going to copy it and paste itand post it on their website.
And it's a lawyer did that,I think recently or a couple
years or a year or two backright when AI came out and they
used AI to write their wholedeposition and it was full of
incorrect cases and I think theymight have gone disbarred
for that.
So that's where you just got toreally, really be careful.
(15:44):
Yeah, absolutely. No,that's great advice. Now,
Google Ads.
Now I know I don't like GoogleAds1 because they're expensive,
but.
But how can Google Adsbetter our reach?
Well, unfortunately,most people that come to your
website are going toleave immediately.
(16:04):
It's that bounce rate,like around 50% of your traffic
on average. On a normal website,half the traffic is
going to leave.
And that's where you can followpeople around with banner ads.
So if you ever looked at aproduct and you'll buy it,
those ads will followyou around.
That's all through remarketingon Google.
And that's where you can followpeople around and keep yourself
top of mind and just keep thosetouch points for warm leads.
(16:28):
So I like to run those adsindefinitely because you want to
keep yourself top of mind.
And half that trafficis going to leave.
And you spent a lot of timegetting that traffic to your
website and following aroundwith those ads is really,
really cheap.
You could get away with hittinga thousand people a day
with your ads for $10.
Really cost effective.
And these are all warm leadsof people have been
to your website,but for some reason they
(16:50):
didn't convert.
And those ads I like to Run.
There's lots of other adsyou can run. Search ads.
Those are very expensive.
YouTube is owned by Google.
They give you 30 seconds freead space on YouTube.
So if someone watches your videoad for 29 seconds and
then skips it,you don't pay a penny
after 30 seconds.
It's free couple cents of you.
It's really,really cheap and cost effective.
And that's where it'sall about testing.
(17:11):
And not just running thoseexpensive Google search ads,
but running all the other adsthat Google lets you do.
But I would always run thoseremarketing because you always
want to keep yourselftop of mind.
Especially for people that havebeen to your website and didn't
make that purchase or callyou follow them around.
Great advice. But you know,is it advisable to get someone
(17:32):
to do set up the ads for you oris it wise to do it yourself?
It just depends on your time andyour learning capabilities.
It took me years to learn GoogleAds and you can do it yourself
pretty quickly with Googleor with YouTube.
I put a lot of classes out thatteach people how to do it.
But then you have to spend thetime and then you have to go in
(17:54):
the ads almost every single dayto see what's working and
what's not working.
Stop the bleeding onwasted clicks.
Because every click iscosting you money.
And that means every day youneed to be going in and say stop
showing me for these keywords orthis audience like maybe
males 20 to 25,they're clicking but they're not
converting. Cut them out.
Females 30 to 35,they're clicking,
(18:15):
they're converting.
Push more money to that.
But you have to constantly begoing in there and tweaking
those ads.
It becomes almost like a parttime job because you're going to
go in there almostevery single day.
If you're not going in thereon a daily basis,
you're just wasting money onclicks that are not converting.
And that's what Google and allthese platforms want you to do
is set an ad up and forget it.
You should never do that.
(18:35):
You have to go in thereconstantly. Test.
Yeah,so I guess it's advisable to
have a a marketing company likeyourself go in and do that
because you've gotthe resources to,
to spend the time to make surethat we're getting
the ads right.
That is important.
But there's some stuffthat you could do.
But do you really have timeto go in every single day?
(18:55):
If you do great,but if you don't have
time to do that,then it might be better to
delegate to somebody else thatcould take that off your load.
That way you can focuson other things.
Because when you'rea business owner,
there's too many things that youhave to do and to worry about.
Google Ads,it's a whole new skill set.
It's like me trying to change myengine in my car. It's like,
I could do it,but it's probably gonna take me
(19:16):
a month or two of or probablylonger to figure out
how to do that.
So it just depends on how muchtime you have to invest
in yourself,in learning a new topic and.
Or learning a new skill set.
But then also,how often are I going to use it?
If I need to changemy car's engine,
is it worth me to spend a fewmonths to learn that?
And how often am I going toreally need to do that?
Probably once. Maybe once.
(19:37):
Probably in your lifetime.
Hopefully you don't need todo it more than that.
So it's like all that time justto have a skill set that
you only do once is.
It's a lot of work.
Absolutely. Now,talking about competitor
analysis,what are some techniques that
we can use for that?
The best way is reallyunderstand that online and
offline is different.
(19:57):
And when you're searchingonline,
whoever ranks on that first pageof Google is your competitor.
If you're selling dog foodand Amazon ranks,
that technically isyour competitor,
even though they selleverything.
Whoever ranks on that firstpage of Google,
that's your competition andthat's who you want to analyze.
So always think of online andoffline different. Like,
(20:18):
I get a lot of people that cometo me and say, hey, here's a.
Like, a restaurant will cometo me and say,
here's a list of restaurantsthat all are my competitors.
And I search on Google and noneof them rank. But I see, like,
well, in America,Yelp is really big,
or TripAdvisor or OpenTableor something like that,
where it's a listing ofrestaurants ranks and it's
not really a restaurant,but they rank on Google.
(20:40):
So technically,that is your competition,
and that's who we want toanalyze their keywords,
their backlinks,and their entire SEO strategy to
see what are they doing and howcan we do a better job of it.
Like, a lot of work, though,Brandon. You know, as you say,
business owners are busy.
They don't have the time to doall this stuff. So, again,
(21:00):
getting a digital marketingcompany or agency is probably
your best advice.
It's took me a while to realizethat delegating is the best
thing because I always wantedto hold on to everything,
but you got to delegate somethings that just don't have time
to do, like accounting.
I could do my QuickBooks,but I really want to spend a
couple hours every single weekessentially managing,
(21:24):
making sure my balance,everything's balanced,
or just pass it on to someone.
That way I can focus on moreimportant things like growing
the business or doing podcastinterviews or writing blogs and
articles and doing my socialmedia and all these other things
that are on that list of to dosthat I can't really give
those off to people.
I can't have someone be a gueston a podcast on my behalf.
It's not really going to work.
So there's only so much time inthe day and sometimes you just
(21:46):
got to let things go anddelegate and it makes
things much,much better in the long run.
It's tough to let go at first,but once you do it, you're like,
why did I do this years ago?
Because it's giving me so muchmore free time to really focus
on my core capabilitiesand my expertise.
Yeah, absolutely. Now,your website,
SEO optimizers.com,what can people find there?
(22:07):
And you know,what can they expect?
So everyone that madeit to the end,
I made a special gift for you.
If you go to my website at s e ooptimizers.comm forward/gift,
that's s e o o P T I I z e-rs.com forward slash gift.
(22:28):
And I can find that gift therealong with my contact
information and classes I'vedone over the years I've
thrown out for free.
So you can see step by step howto do a lot of stuff that we
talked about with SEO.
Google Ads, social media,all that stuff.
I've created free courses thatyou can watch anytime.
And also if they have a websiteand they want a website
analysis, free consultation,I'm happy to check out their
(22:50):
website from an SEO point ofview and see what is working or
what's not working and how toget you to that level that
you want to be at.
Very good. Excellent.
Now you can find Brandoneverywhere. He's on Facebook,
he's on LinkedIn,he's on YouTube, Instagram,
Twitter, Pinterest,TikTok and Buzzsprout. Now,
(23:11):
all these links will be put inthe show notes when
this goes to air.
Brandon what else canpeople you know,
what advice would you givepeople that are starting out
with SEO or how to improve theirSEO patience is key.
Unfortunately, with SEO,it's not immediate.
It takes time to get Google totrust you and to rank you.
(23:34):
And a lot of people want thatimmediate results. With SEO,
you're not going to get thatsocial media, paid ads,
that's the way to get thatimmediate traction.
SEO is a slow,steady growth and over time
you're going to get more andmore and more traffic.
But you have to be patient.
And a lot of people getdiscouraged and give up.
But it does take sixmonths on average.
It could take more to take lessdepending on the competition
(23:57):
of those keywords.
But just stick with it.
Don't get discouraged if youdon't see those immediate
rankings.
Absolutely. Great advice.
Brandon.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you for joining us hereon Talking with the Experts.
I look forward to sharingthis with you,
with you in the future and Ihope you'll come back
on one day.
Thank you so much forhaving me on.
(24:20):
You've been listening to Talkingwith the Experts,
hosted by Rose Davidson.
Make sure you have a look at ourback catalogue over at talking
with the experts.com and be sureto subscribe to our podcast so
you don't miss outon any episode.
We look forward to yourcompany next time.
Foreign.
With the Experts learnexpert SEO.
Tips for 2025 with BrandonLeibowitz.
Discover keyword research,competitor analysis and website
optimization strategiesin episode 571.
What do you want to try to find?
(00:20):
Like,keywords that are good for SEO
are going to be hashtagsfor social media.
So the hashtag is where you putthe pound sign in front of a
word and it becomesa keyword per se.
So you want to try to find goodkeywords that you want to use as
hashtags and incorporate thoseinto your content.
Make sure your images or videoshave file names that are
(00:41):
descriptive before you uploadthem to social media. Really,
really important.
And just making sure,depending on what platform
you're on,if you can write a title
like YouTube,make it a good title
for your video.
But every platform is different.
It's just trying to figure outhow to best optimize for the
space that you're given andtrying to look at your
competition and seeingwhat they're doing.
What type of keywords, imagery,videos,
(01:03):
what type of content are theyposting and trying to replicate
that and try to sprinkle inthose keywords to try to
maximize the reachof that content.
Talking with the Experts.
Welcome to Talkingwith the Experts.
This is where we discuss greatideas to take your business
(01:25):
to the next level.
How do we know these ideas work?
Well,it's because we're talking with
business owners who areusing these ideas.
Business owners who have yearsof experience and expertise.
All things Business by businessowners for business owners.
And now here is your host,Rose Davidson.
(01:48):
Hello.
Welcome to Talking with theExperts. I'm your host,
Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.
talking with the Experts is allabout business by business
owners for business owners.
You can find it on allpodcasting streaming platforms
and on YouTube.
And today my guest is BrandonLeibowitz and Brandon is going
(02:09):
to be discussing with us allthings SEO. Now we know,
we know with the advent ofAI and all those things,
sometimes our SEO needsa bit of a tweak.
So Bren is going to discuss withus how we can optimize our
websites and how strategies thatwe can use, how to use research,
keywords and techniques forcompetitor analysis. Brandon,
(02:33):
welcome to the podcast.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you for havingme on today.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizers and has done
so since 2007.
And he they are a digitalmarketing company that focus on
helping small and medium sizedbusinesses get more online
(02:53):
traffic which in turn convertsinto clients, sales and leads.
Brandon,tell me a little bit about why
SEO is so important. You know,a lot of people don't think in
this day and age with AI andstuff that SEO is important,
but, you know, in my mind,it still is.
So SEO is ranking websiteson search engines.
(03:16):
And it doesn't matterwhere you search.
If you're searching on Google,bing, Facebook, Twitter, Yo,
TripAdvisor, chat, GBT,anywhere where you're
searching Amazon,there's ways to optimize and try
to make you rank higher withoutspending money on paid ads.
Which is ultimate goal is tryingto make sure that you show up in
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those free searches on whateverplatform you're searching on.
It doesn't may haveto be Google.
It could be anywhere thatyou're able to search.
There are ways to optimize andmake sure that you Rank higher.
And AI is. ChatGPT is a big one.
Chat GPT is open,owned by OpenAI,
which is really Bing.
So it's just Bing putting thesearch results in a new format
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for people to read.
But you still have to optimizeif you want to show up in AI or
Google or Amazon or whateverplatform that you're
trying to rank for.
So why is SEO so importantfor website conversion?
SEO is going to getyou free traffic.
SEO doesn't lead to conversions,but it leads to targeted
traffic.
And once people getto your website,
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then you got to make sure youoptimize your website for
those conversions,which is called conversion
rate optimization.
But SEO is really trying to makesure that when people search it,
search wherever they'researching,
that you show up and you capturethat targeted traffic.
And then once they getto your website,
then you got to work on how tomake sure that every visitor
then converts into a sale orlead or phone call or whatever
(04:40):
that conversion goal is thatyou're trying to focus on.
So I guess you know,people putting, you know,
keywords into their website and,you know,
in the back end of their pageand, and all that. You know,
how, how do you use SEO?
How do you find those, you know,focus keywords that is so
(05:01):
important when building theback end of your page.
I try to look at my competitionfirst and start from there.
So I'll go into Google,search for my keywords,
see who ranks on that firstpage of Google,
and look at that blueclickable link,
which is called theSEO title tag.
That's where everybody isputting their keywords.
(05:23):
And I could quickly look at mycompetition and see what
keywords are they using.
And write them down.
And what I want to do is make abig list of keywords and then
use tools like the GoogleKeyword Planner to figure out
how many people actually searchfor that keyword every single
month. But first,I like to try to spy my
competition and getideas from them.
Because if someone's onpage one of Google,
(05:43):
they probably did some keywordresearch. Hopefully,
maybe they just got lucky.
But in general,most of those websites probably
did some keyword research andyou can get ideas and see is
everyone using a singularor plural or a synonym?
And if you see everyone,if you're trying to rank for a
keyword and you see everyone'susing a plural,
maybe the plural mightbe a better one.
But you still need to checkusing the Keyword planner from
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Google to really see how manypeople search for that keyword
every single month.
Like one of my clients orpersonal injury lawyer,
and they want to rank forpersonal injury lawyers,
which gets I think 20,000searches a month in Los Angeles,
where I live.
But personal injury LawyerSingular gets 200,000 searches
every single month.
Just by removing thatone letter,
(06:26):
you're going to get 10times more searches.
That's why you got todo keyword research,
because you could guess andyou might get it right,
but you also might get it wrong.
And it only takes a few minutesto do that research.
Quite often I I,I use ChatGPT to, you know,
get those focus keywords for theback end of the website
to do the SEO.
Yeah Is it better to use them oris it better to use the
(06:50):
Google platform?
It depends how you're doingkeyword research.
If you just want list ofkeywords and Chat GPT is okay.
But if you want to know how manypeople search for that keyword
every single month,Chat GPT is going to give you
the complete wrong numbers.
Like their numbers don'teven match up close.
And that's the thing with AI.
It doesn't know the rightanswer a lot of times.
(07:11):
And if it doesn'tknow the answer,
it's going to make it up andit's not going to tell you
that it's making it up.
So I would probably avoid doingkeyword research on Chat GPT or
any AI for the time beingbecause it's just so
far inaccurate.
And using the Google KeywordPlanner takes the same amount
of time as using Chat GPT.
Right, that,that's that's a good
(07:32):
tip because, yeah,I've been using it and using
that and they ask,I ask for A focus keyword.
And you're right,it doesn't give me the amount of
searches for that particularfocus keyword at all. So yeah,
I think I might start using theGoogle Planner instead and
find out, you know,what I'm doing wrong. Because,
I mean,when I go and search for my
(07:52):
page, it comes up automatically,but I don't know exactly what
page it's on in Google.
So just quietly,how can you find out what
page you're on?
What do you mean?
Where you rank in Google.
So if you put,say if I put my website
URL into the,into the search bar
(08:12):
and it comes up,how do I know where my
page ranks in Google?
Obviously,you have to just search.
So if you want to see whatposition you're in,
you're gonna have to searchand see where you rank.
So if you're ranking for likecar mechanic near me,
you could just search.
And you have to go through allthose pages of Google to
see where you're at.
(08:33):
But usually I want to go pastpage three if you want to,
but there's tools that will letyou check and Scan to page 10 to
see what position you're in forthose different keywords.
I wonder if I must be onnearly page one then,
because I don't haveto search very far.
Yeah,but anytime it's your company
name, that's not really.
We want to rank for keywordsthat don't have your company
name. Non brand keywords.
(08:54):
Because anything withyour company name,
you're always goingto rank for that.
But what you want to do andanyone searching for
your company,they already know who you are.
You want to show up for newsearches of people that don't
know who you are.
And that's where you want todo unbranded searches.
Keywords that don't mention yourbrand name or a company name or
your name where it's justmentioning the services only.
And that's going to getyou that new traffic.
(09:15):
Oh, I'll do that. I'll go,I'll go and do that after this
interview and see how we go.
Branda,what are some really great SEO
strategies that we canwork on for 2025?
PlanningI'd say adding more text to your
website is something thatdoesn't require coding and is
easy enough for everyone to do.
Is Google feeds off text.
The more text you have on everysingle page on your website,
(09:39):
the easier it is for the searchengines to read and really know
what that page is about.
And you have to Put text onevery single page has to
be original content.
Google doesn't care who writesit anymore, AI or people,
as long as it's accurate.
Because again,AI is not accurate.
So if you just copyand paste from AI,
it might do more harm than good.
But if you go in and tweak andedit it, that's perfectly fine.
(10:02):
But you need to add text onevery single page. It is really,
really important.
Doing that alone will almostguarantee you'll get
more traffic.
So you know, in,in our marketing plans,
how can we, you know,add SEO into, you know,
our marketing strategy?
For your marketing strategy,you just want to try to figure
(10:23):
out who your audience is andwhere they are and are they
going to be on Google searchingor they're on Google,
where are they?
Maybe they're on social mediaand you can optimize for social
media or if they're on adirectory or like TripAdvisor or
Yelp or something like that,you can optimize for that and
just trying to understandwho your audience is,
where are they and how do I getin front of them at
(10:44):
the right moment?
That's really the most importantthing is where are they and how
do I get myself in front of themwhen they're actively looking
for my product or service?
That's where sometimes you justhave to take a step
back and think,if you were looking for your
product or service,where would you go?
And then you kind of just pieceit together and try to test and
see what works and push moretime and money into what's
(11:05):
working and pull money and timeaway from what's not working.
Yeah, I guess you know,as we've said,
SEO is a really important partof building a website.
You know,how can we use the research
tools and to, you know, betterget those important keywords
(11:28):
that we need to have.
Yeah, you want to look at thosekeyword research tools that
I was talking about,like the Google Keyword Planner
and you put your keyword inthere and it'll show you how
many people search for yourkeyword every single month.
So then you go for the highsearch volume keywords.
But just because it's a highsearch volume keyword doesn't
always mean it's the bestbecause it probably means it's
(11:48):
very, very competitive.
The more competitivethe keyword is,
the more time it's goingto take to rank.
That's where you just go in andsearch that keyword that you
think you want to rank for onGoogle and see who ranks on
that first page of Google.
And if it's a bunch of bigcorporations and you're
just a startup,might have to skip that keyword.
But if it's a bunch of small ormedium sized websites and you're
a startup, go for that keyword.
(12:10):
But that's where you have to goin and dive in and really take
the time to find those lowcompetition keywords that
have good search volume.
And what is it? You know,can you explain to me you know
in the keyword search it tellsyou how many clicks there are,
but there's othernumbers in that sort of line.
(12:33):
You know, that some people don'tunderstand. So you've got,
you know, clicks perconversion or clicks per
something or other.
I don't know what that,what exactly that it means.
Can you explain to me youknow what those numbers,
all those numbers mean?
When you're lookingfor a keyword, it.
Depends where you're looking.
Every platform is goingto be different.
(12:54):
If you're just looking at theGoogle Keyword Planner,
it's going to show you the,how many people search for that
keyword every single month.
The competition,it's going to show you the cost.
If you want to run paid ads,it'll show you how much
each click will be.
But it depends what platformyou're on.
If you're on a differentthird party tool,
it might show you differentdata points.
(13:15):
But Google Keyword Planner isgoing to show you competition,
search volume,cost per click and the monthly
searches year over year,how it's changed,
if it's increased or decreased.
Right, okay,so social media marketing SEO
is quite important in that.
I understand that.
(13:35):
And how can we use SEO in oursocial media marketing?
Well,you want to try to find like
keywords that are good for SEOare going to be hashtags
for social media.
So the hashtag is where you putthe pound sign in front of a
word and it becomesa keyword per se.
So you want to try to find goodkeywords that you want to use as
(13:58):
hashtags and incorporate thoseinto your content.
Make sure your images or videoshave file names that are
descriptive before you uploadthem to social media. Really,
really important.
And just making sure,depending on what platform
you're on,if you can write a title
like YouTube,making a good title
for your video.
But every platform is different.
It's just trying to figure outhow to best optimize for the
(14:19):
space that you're given andtrying to look at your
competition and seeingwhat are you doing,
what type of keywords,imagery videos,
what type of content are theyposting and trying to replicate
that and trying to sprinkle inthose keywords to try to
maximize the reachof that content.
That's really important that wedo our keyword research and just
don't rely on AI to, you know,to spit out the hashtags or the
(14:42):
keywords that we're looking for.
So Actually sitting down anddoing that research is
really important,is what you're saying.
AI is a, okay starting point,but to really get the numbers,
you could ask AI to giveyou the numbers,
but they're going tobe completely off.
So that's where it's okay toget some keyword ideas.
But if you want to know thedata points, the numbers,
(15:03):
you gotta use a real tool likethe Keyword Planner.
Yeah.
So now it'll change,but right now AI is just full
of those inaccuracies.
And we don't want to putsomething out and think that's
good and it's really not good.
And AI is doing,doing those AI hallucinations
and it's not telling youthat it's making it up,
which is really weird.
I feel like if it doesn't know,just tell us. You don't know,
(15:24):
don't make something up becausethen a lot of people are just
going to copy it and paste itand post it on their website.
And it's a lawyer did that,I think recently or a couple
years or a year or two backright when AI came out and they
used AI to write their wholedeposition and it was full of
incorrect cases and I think theymight have gone disbarred
for that.
So that's where you just got toreally, really be careful.
(15:44):
Yeah, absolutely. No,that's great advice. Now,
Google Ads.
Now I know I don't like GoogleAds1 because they're expensive,
but.
But how can Google Adsbetter our reach?
Well, unfortunately,most people that come to your
website are going toleave immediately.
(16:04):
It's that bounce rate,like around 50% of your traffic
on average. On a normal website,half the traffic is
going to leave.
And that's where you can followpeople around with banner ads.
So if you ever looked at aproduct and you'll buy it,
those ads will followyou around.
That's all through remarketingon Google.
And that's where you can followpeople around and keep yourself
top of mind and just keep thosetouch points for warm leads.
(16:28):
So I like to run those adsindefinitely because you want to
keep yourself top of mind.
And half that trafficis going to leave.
And you spent a lot of timegetting that traffic to your
website and following aroundwith those ads is really,
really cheap.
You could get away with hittinga thousand people a day
with your ads for $10.
Really cost effective.
And these are all warm leadsof people have been
to your website,but for some reason they
(16:50):
didn't convert.
And those ads I like to Run.
There's lots of other adsyou can run. Search ads.
Those are very expensive.
YouTube is owned by Google.
They give you 30 seconds freead space on YouTube.
So if someone watches your videoad for 29 seconds and
then skips it,you don't pay a penny
after 30 seconds.
It's free couple cents of you.
It's really,really cheap and cost effective.
And that's where it'sall about testing.
(17:11):
And not just running thoseexpensive Google search ads,
but running all the other adsthat Google lets you do.
But I would always run thoseremarketing because you always
want to keep yourselftop of mind.
Especially for people that havebeen to your website and didn't
make that purchase or callyou follow them around.
Great advice. But you know,is it advisable to get someone
(17:32):
to do set up the ads for you oris it wise to do it yourself?
It just depends on your time andyour learning capabilities.
It took me years to learn GoogleAds and you can do it yourself
pretty quickly with Googleor with YouTube.
I put a lot of classes out thatteach people how to do it.
But then you have to spend thetime and then you have to go in
(17:54):
the ads almost every single dayto see what's working and
what's not working.
Stop the bleeding onwasted clicks.
Because every click iscosting you money.
And that means every day youneed to be going in and say stop
showing me for these keywords orthis audience like maybe
males 20 to 25,they're clicking but they're not
converting. Cut them out.
Females 30 to 35,they're clicking,
(18:15):
they're converting.
Push more money to that.
But you have to constantly begoing in there and tweaking
those ads.
It becomes almost like a parttime job because you're going to
go in there almostevery single day.
If you're not going in thereon a daily basis,
you're just wasting money onclicks that are not converting.
And that's what Google and allthese platforms want you to do
is set an ad up and forget it.
You should never do that.
(18:35):
You have to go in thereconstantly. Test.
Yeah,so I guess it's advisable to
have a a marketing company likeyourself go in and do that
because you've gotthe resources to,
to spend the time to make surethat we're getting
the ads right.
That is important.
But there's some stuffthat you could do.
But do you really have timeto go in every single day?
(18:55):
If you do great,but if you don't have
time to do that,then it might be better to
delegate to somebody else thatcould take that off your load.
That way you can focuson other things.
Because when you'rea business owner,
there's too many things that youhave to do and to worry about.
Google Ads,it's a whole new skill set.
It's like me trying to change myengine in my car. It's like,
I could do it,but it's probably gonna take me
(19:16):
a month or two of or probablylonger to figure out
how to do that.
So it just depends on how muchtime you have to invest
in yourself,in learning a new topic and.
Or learning a new skill set.
But then also,how often are I going to use it?
If I need to changemy car's engine,
is it worth me to spend a fewmonths to learn that?
And how often am I going toreally need to do that?
Probably once. Maybe once.
(19:37):
Probably in your lifetime.
Hopefully you don't need todo it more than that.
So it's like all that time justto have a skill set that
you only do once is.
It's a lot of work.
Absolutely. Now,talking about competitor
analysis,what are some techniques that
we can use for that?
The best way is reallyunderstand that online and
offline is different.
(19:57):
And when you're searchingonline,
whoever ranks on that first pageof Google is your competitor.
If you're selling dog foodand Amazon ranks,
that technically isyour competitor,
even though they selleverything.
Whoever ranks on that firstpage of Google,
that's your competition andthat's who you want to analyze.
So always think of online andoffline different. Like,
(20:18):
I get a lot of people that cometo me and say, hey, here's a.
Like, a restaurant will cometo me and say,
here's a list of restaurantsthat all are my competitors.
And I search on Google and noneof them rank. But I see, like,
well, in America,Yelp is really big,
or TripAdvisor or OpenTableor something like that,
where it's a listing ofrestaurants ranks and it's
not really a restaurant,but they rank on Google.
(20:40):
So technically,that is your competition,
and that's who we want toanalyze their keywords,
their backlinks,and their entire SEO strategy to
see what are they doing and howcan we do a better job of it.
Like, a lot of work, though,Brandon. You know, as you say,
business owners are busy.
They don't have the time to doall this stuff. So, again,
(21:00):
getting a digital marketingcompany or agency is probably
your best advice.
It's took me a while to realizethat delegating is the best
thing because I always wantedto hold on to everything,
but you got to delegate somethings that just don't have time
to do, like accounting.
I could do my QuickBooks,but I really want to spend a
couple hours every single weekessentially managing,
(21:24):
making sure my balance,everything's balanced,
or just pass it on to someone.
That way I can focus on moreimportant things like growing
the business or doing podcastinterviews or writing blogs and
articles and doing my socialmedia and all these other things
that are on that list of to dosthat I can't really give
those off to people.
I can't have someone be a gueston a podcast on my behalf.
It's not really going to work.
So there's only so much time inthe day and sometimes you just
(21:46):
got to let things go anddelegate and it makes
things much,much better in the long run.
It's tough to let go at first,but once you do it, you're like,
why did I do this years ago?
Because it's giving me so muchmore free time to really focus
on my core capabilitiesand my expertise.
Yeah, absolutely. Now,your website,
SEO optimizers.com,what can people find there?
(22:07):
And you know,what can they expect?
So everyone that madeit to the end,
I made a special gift for you.
If you go to my website at s e ooptimizers.comm forward/gift,
that's s e o o P T I I z e-rs.com forward slash gift.
(22:28):
And I can find that gift therealong with my contact
information and classes I'vedone over the years I've
thrown out for free.
So you can see step by step howto do a lot of stuff that we
talked about with SEO.
Google Ads, social media,all that stuff.
I've created free courses thatyou can watch anytime.
And also if they have a websiteand they want a website
analysis, free consultation,I'm happy to check out their
(22:50):
website from an SEO point ofview and see what is working or
what's not working and how toget you to that level that
you want to be at.
Very good. Excellent.
Now you can find Brandoneverywhere. He's on Facebook,
he's on LinkedIn,he's on YouTube, Instagram,
Twitter, Pinterest,TikTok and Buzzsprout. Now,
(23:11):
all these links will be put inthe show notes when
this goes to air.
Brandon what else canpeople you know,
what advice would you givepeople that are starting out
with SEO or how to improve theirSEO patience is key.
Unfortunately, with SEO,it's not immediate.
It takes time to get Google totrust you and to rank you.
(23:34):
And a lot of people want thatimmediate results. With SEO,
you're not going to get thatsocial media, paid ads,
that's the way to get thatimmediate traction.
SEO is a slow,steady growth and over time
you're going to get more andmore and more traffic.
But you have to be patient.
And a lot of people getdiscouraged and give up.
But it does take sixmonths on average.
It could take more to take lessdepending on the competition
(23:57):
of those keywords.
But just stick with it.
Don't get discouraged if youdon't see those immediate
rankings.
Absolutely. Great advice.
Brandon.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you for joining us hereon Talking with the Experts.
I look forward to sharingthis with you,
with you in the future and Ihope you'll come back
on one day.
Thank you so much forhaving me on.
(24:20):
You've been listening to Talkingwith the Experts,
hosted by Rose Davidson.
Make sure you have a look at ourback catalogue over at talking
with the experts.com and be sureto subscribe to our podcast so
you don't miss outon any episode.
We look forward to yourcompany next time.
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