June 3, 2025 • 34 mins
🎙️ Just dropped a fun and insightful convo with Natasha Basilevic on the Speak with Power podcast!
I had the chance to share my journey of launching SEO Optimizers back in 2007, how I stumbled into SEO, why I'm obsessed with free traffic from Google, and how I turned my passion for skateboarding into a viral social media brand. 🛹💻
We dove deep into SEO strategies, social media growth hacks, using content calendars, and how to figure out where your audience actually hangs out. I even broke down how to repurpose content across platforms with tools like Zapier—and yes, it saves me hours every week. 😅
If you're a business owner, creator, or just curious how to build trust online, grow your brand, and avoid wasting time on the wrong platforms... this one's for you.
Oh, and we talked about clean water access too 🌍💧 because marketing is great—but impact matters even more.
Tune in and let me know what you think!
🎧 Listen now and let’s speak with power!
#SEO #DigitalMarketing #SocialMediaTips #SpeakWithPower #EntrepreneurLife #SEOOptimizers #OnlineMarketing #ContentStrategy #SkateboardingLife #BrandGrowth #ZapierHacks #GoogleSEO #SocialMediaMarketing #PodcastGuest #MarketingTips #InstagramMarketing #StartupLife #SmallBusinessSupport #PublicSpeakingTips #MarketingJourney
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello my friend.
Welcome to Speak with Powerpodcast. I'm Natasha Basilevic,
a business trainer,speaker and public
speaking coach.
I teach entrepreneurs andexecutives all over the world
to build confidence,craft their clear message and
deliver it with power.
Would you love to master yourpresentation skills,
(00:21):
learn how to speak withpersuasion and get inspiration
from powerful speakersall around the globe?
Then stay tuned and don'tforget to subscribe.
Welcome back to Speak withPower, my dear friends,
and today have another amazingguest for you,
Brandon Leibowitz.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizer since 2007.
(00:45):
It's a digital marketing companythat focuses on helping small
and medium sized businessesget more online traffic,
which in turn converts intoclients, sales, leads and so on.
Welcome Brandon.
Thanks for having me on today.
It's really great to haveyou with us. And first,
of course I want to know,we want to know your story.
(01:07):
Tell us,how did you get into SEO?
How did you get into socialmedia marketing and so on?
Yeah,I just kind of stumbled upon it
after I graduated from college,got my degree in business
marketing and the first job Igot out of school was helping a
company out with their digitalmarketing, doing SEO,
helping out with social media,helping out with paid ads,
(01:30):
taking pictures of products,kind of doing it all.
And just realized back thenthat this is in 2007,
everyone's probably going tohave a website in the future.
And everything I mentioned worksto get traffic. It's just SEO.
Search engine optimization iswhere to get free traffic.
So I focused on that onea little bit more.
But everything definitelydoes work.
(01:51):
Perfect So what reallyfascinates you about this?
Because I assume that youlove your job, right?
You enjoy what you, you do.
What is the most enjoyablepart of it?
Watching businesses grow,helping them succeed and helping
them get to that next level.
That's probably the.
And Google changes all the time,so it's not the same thing over
(02:11):
and over again because thatwould get a little mundane
and boring.
So Google's always changing andit makes it kind of like a game
trying to figure out howthey're working.
Interesting Now you saidthat it's changing,
Google changes and I'msure social media,
all the social media platforms,they keep changing their
algorithm, keep,how do you keep,
keep track of it always and howdo you make sure that you don't,
(02:34):
don't lose any new thingsthat appear.
It is a lot of just reading,testing things out,
reading blogs, articles,joining like Facebook groups or
forums or wherever you couldinteract with other people that
are doing what you're doing.
So I find other people that doan SEO to figure out what's
going on with Google,Find other people that are
(02:56):
focused on social media tofigure out what's going on with
social because they're allchanging, they're all different,
it's not the same,it's not a one size fits all.
Every platform is going to bedifferent on how they operate,
how they work.
So just trying to kindof piece it together,
but nobody really knows how itworks because they keep
it top secret.
So it's just kind of look attiny things that we see help
(03:17):
out or don't help out,but you really don't know
for the most part.
Oh really? So it is top secret.
They don't reveal everything,they just reveal some things.
And mostly.
So what about you expertslike you,
you guess or you just look fromyour experience you get certain
conclusions that oh,this is what they changed.
(03:38):
Oh, that's how it works.
Trial and error.
But usually when they change,like what Google's doing
is cleaning up spam.
So they're findingpeople have game.
The system found loopholes andways to rank their quickly
without doing the things thatGoogle wants you to do.
So most of the time it's notreally changing how you have
to operate your website.
(03:58):
It's just making sure thatyou're not doing anything shady
or weird or unethical.
So you could read Googlewebmaster guidelines.
They'll tell you whatthey're looking for,
what they're not looking for.
Sometimes they'll tell you, hey,we're going to change
the algorithm.
If your website loads slowly,that's not good.
So little things likethat or mobile,
if your website's notmobile friendly,
(04:18):
we're not going to showyou on mobile devices.
Those are just kind of basicones where they'll tell you that
because they want a gooduser experience,
they want people to be able toaccess websites from
all over the place.
And if someone's on a cell phoneand they click on your website
and it's really hard to read,you have to like zoom in.
Not a good user experience.
So Google wants you to make it agood user experience for people
so your website looks quickly,it's easy to see everything on
(04:41):
mobile because if not they'regoing to hit that back button
and if that back enough times,they're probably going to leave
Google and go to like Bing orDuckDuckGo or another search
engine because they're just notgetting what they're
looking for.
I wonder if anybody actuallygoes to any other search engine.
I don't even know becausewe used to have Yahoo.
We,we used to have some others that
right now I can't even think ofthem. But now it's just Google.
(05:05):
I don't know if anybody goes.
Do you ever go to anyother search engine?
I don't,but I look in analytics and
I see some people go to.
So like Google will bring inlike 20 to 80% of your traffic.
Bing might bring 1%,Yahoo might bring 1%.
So it's not that big.
But I've worked at agencieswhere we had clients that were
(05:27):
getting like 5,000 visitors aday. So that 1% is a big number.
But if you're a small mediumsized business and you're only
getting like 20 people doyour website a day,
1% isn't that significant.
So but it does add up over timeand it does help out.
But majority of the peoplethey're searching on Google
unless they get tricked intousing like Bing or Yahoo.
Sometimes you're on a website oron a phone or something and it
(05:49):
searches on Bing and you'relike why am I on Bing?
But other than that most peopleusually go to Google.
Yes. Yeah,it's amazing actually how Google
became this go to place and,and everyone.
It's sometimes it fascinates mehow this happens when one
brand really takesthe market. So then, okay,
(06:11):
let's talk about social mediabecause that's where most of
entrepreneurs operate.
I mean of course some peoplepay for Google Ads,
but everyone needs tobe on social media.
Some people might notlike Facebook,
so they will be on Instagram,others might not like
any of those.
So they would be on LinkedIn.
But we all need to knowhow that works.
Would you recommend toentrepreneurs who are not really
(06:35):
experts in that to also readjust like you do read blogs and
articles or do you recommend tofind someone else who would
do it for them?
Or they can even just findinformation without necessarily
spending time for that.
It just depends how much timethey want to invest in doing it.
If they want to learn a newfield they could go for it.
(06:57):
But most of the time it's betterto hire someone or do
it in conjunction.
Hire someone that's going tohelp you out and you do it
because the more that you'reworking on it,
the more traction you get,the quicker you're going to get
those results andthose rankings.
But it just comes down toultimately knowing who your
audience is to try to figure outwho is Your audience and where
(07:17):
are they going to be?
Are they going tobe on Instagram?
Are they going to be on Twitter?
Are they on TikTok?
Are they on Google?
Are they on Yelp or TripAdvisor?
Where are they?
Because you need to be infront of your audience.
That's number one,is not trying to be everywhere,
which I see a lot of peoplespreading themselves too thin,
especially with social media,trying to be on every platform,
which is good to, like,claim your username and maybe
(07:38):
have a presence on them.
But being active onevery platform,
if your audience isn't on there,you don't necessarily
need to be there.
It's good to claim it because itadds social proof. It puts,
like, a face beyond the company.
Social media is really like,hey, we're a business.
You could buy off us on ourwebsite. But like, 10,
15 years ago,a lot of people didn't trust
(07:59):
buying online. Like,there might have been this
website, Bob's TVs,that had been around
for maybe 60 years.
But you're just like,who's Bob's TVs?
I'd rather buy a TV offAmazon or Best Buy,
because I know these bigcorporate brands.
But then Facebook and Socialcame around saying, hey,
we could put a face beyond thecompany and let people engage
with you, ask questions,read reviews,
(08:21):
see status updates.
So then you're like, oh,maybe Bob's TV's is trustworthy.
I could buy off them,even though I've never
heard of them,but they've been around longer
than Amazon and stuff like that.
So social is really good forbuilding trust on people.
Yeah, okay, that's powerful.
Now how would we buildthat trust?
What are your recommendations tomake sure that on any platform,
(08:42):
any social media platform,people trust us.
That would be getting orgiving good value,
giving good content out there,not just promoting yourself all
the time but letting people knowthat you're an industry expert,
that you're, you know,what you're talking about
offering good value.
Because if you're just tryingto sell yourself,
promote yourself all the time,nobody's going to want to follow
(09:05):
that page. So, like,some platforms let you put
reviews. Like Facebook,you can get reviews.
So that's a great way is getthose reviews that people could
just see right there,five stars or four stars or
whatever it is. But, you know,not all the platforms
allow reviews.
So it's more of you puttingyourself out there and letting
people know that you really areknowledgeable, you're helpful,
(09:25):
you respond to comments,messages, things like that.
Just be engaging.
Yes And there arerecommendations on LinkedIn.
I don't know if there's anythinglike that on Instagram.
I don't think so.
Maybe you know,But I know on LinkedIn it really
works when someone endorsesyou or someone gives you a
recommendation and then you haveseveral of those, then yes,
(09:47):
that works too.
Yep, yep,those look really good.
But yeah,LinkedIn lets you do it.
Facebook gives you the reviews.
But Instagram, Pinterest,TikTok,
Twitter don't really do it.
YouTube gets you like the thumbsup so you can see those.
So that's a little something,a little social proof there.
But usually yeah, they're.
(10:07):
It's tricky.
I mean I guess you couldlook at likes,
that could be kind of a signal.
Likes, retweets, favorites,things like that.
Do you have a favorite platform?
I like Instagram,but again it's all about knowing
who your audience is.
So I love skateboardingand sports videos.
Skateboarding is reallybig on Instagram,
so I love that platform.
(10:29):
And Instagram kind of crossesover to all the other platforms.
So the way I like to do is kindof picking one pick like a
central platform and thenletting it cross promote.
So you post on Instagram andthen using tools like Zapier,
a free website.
There's a paid version of it,but it's free and it'll
let you cross promote.
So anytime I post on Instagram,it'll automatically post
(10:50):
on YouTube, on Twitter,on LinkedIn, on Pinterest,
on my own website.
It'll go kind of everywhere withthe click of a button.
I mean sometimes it doesn'talways work.
From Instagram to Twitter,usernames don't always work,
so you got to cleanthat stuff up.
But it helps save a lot of time.
And I always tell people,try to pick one central
platform,use as your central hub and then
(11:10):
kind of like let everything elsecross promote if it works.
Yes, yes. I love that.
That's the way I dowith Facebook.
I post on Facebook and then Ihave people who do that for me,
they just repost.
Actually don't even use Zapier.
That's a good idea.
So because I use Zapierfor connecting
my calendly and my Google,my Gmail and my type form.
(11:35):
So there is.
It I do use it for some things,but I didn't know that
it can do that also.
So it can actually send.
Zapier is great tool. Free.
I mean the paid version is socheap and it saves
hours of time.
Like the way I do it with socialprobably saves me hours of time
every single day or week becauseI don't have to manually go into
(11:56):
Facebook, on Instagram,on Twitter, on YouTube,
on Pinterest.
I just go to one platformand post from there.
And I usually scheduleeverything out too.
So with Instagram or whateverplatform you're on,
you get to scheduleeverything out.
So I'll just sit there early orat the beginning of the month
and schedule out all the poststhat I want to post
on Instagram.
Then it's going to cross promoteall the other platforms and then
(12:17):
all I have to do is go in andread review or messages or if
there's something topical ortimely then I could post that.
But other than that,can I just like sit back,
let it kind of post on its ownand focus on other things?
Well, do they work though?
Because if you post on oneplatform and I know that in on
some platforms they just havedifferent expectations of even
(12:40):
what kind of content we post oreven visually it has to be
a little bit different.
Does that work for you?
Do you take that intoconsideration?
Or you just post and let it go?
So it doesn't always worklike you're saying,
like if you're posting fromInstagram to TikTok,
they can see that they don'twant you to share something
(13:00):
from Instagram to TikTok.
So they'll kind of drop thatreach or engagement
a little bit.
It's kind of tough to reallygauge if they do it or not.
But I've seen when I do post,it doesn't reach as well versus
me natively posting onthose platforms.
But you can schedulethem all out too.
So you can use schedulersfor all these platforms.
But sometimes.
So like I have a skateboardingpage, love skateboarding.
(13:20):
And made that as a littlepassion project on the side
because I was like helped outall these companies
over the years.
How about I help myself out andfollow what I love? And man,
Instagram page it grew to couplehundred thousand followers which
kind of didn't expect usto grow that quickly.
But then I realized let me justhave everything cross promote.
So every time I post onInstagram it posts to YouTube.
If it's a video that grew to17,000 subscribers without me
(13:44):
ever really manually postinga video in there.
It posts to Facebookautomatically and Facebook
grew to 50,000 likes.
I mean maybe it translated overbecause I had a big following
on Instagram,but same with Twitter.
I have Instagram post to Twitterand it grew to like 45,
000 followers.
So you never know whereyour audience is at.
And I didn't think all theseplatforms would be where
(14:04):
my audience is.
So I'm not like trying to makeit the perfect content because I
know my real audience isreally on Instagram.
That's where I'm focused mainly.
But letting it cross,promote it works for
the most part.
But it would be better to go inand really touch everything up,
clean it up. Because every,like you said,
every platform is slightlydifferent.
They're looking at differentthings, colors, sizes,
dimensions, things like that,length of the videos.
(14:27):
They're all slightly different.
Yes. Because even the size,if on Instagram it could
be this story size,then on YouTube probably won't
work because it has to be.
Unless you are actually shootingyour videos horizontally.
Yeah, that's,that's really interesting that
you basically didn't,didn't do anything or any like,
(14:49):
not much effort.
You just posted on Instagram,but all other platforms
benefited from that or yourprofiles and other platforms.
Well, that's amazing.
And you just touched this reallyinteresting point about social
media marketing is using our ownhobbies and interests and some
passion projects that are notmaybe even connected to our
(15:12):
business for showing who we are.
Could you talk a little bitabout the value of that,
of using?
Because sometimes peoplemight think, oh, well,
how is that connected? Okay,I am a, well, I'm a runner,
so I do use that onmy social media.
Sometimes people might think,oh, well, I am I love cooking,
but I sell, I,I help people with advertising
(15:33):
or whatever or, or I teach,I coach.
So how is that connected?
It's not.
So I shouldn't reallypost about it.
Share your thoughts on that.
So yeah,I've thought about that too.
And usually I would say separatethem if it's, if it's similar,
like cooking and running,they're both kind of about
health, wellness,so it could overlap
a little bit.
But if it's like cooking andan auto body mechanic shop,
(15:56):
that might be a littletoo far off.
So if it's somewhat related,it's okay.
But following your passions isalways going to be the best
because that's where you reallyshow your authenticity,
your knowledge, your,your expertise.
But it just comes down tohow related are they?
If they're not really related.
I might want to separate them.
But if there's some overlap,then go for it.
And also just test it out.
(16:16):
You never know what's going towork, what's not going to work.
So try it out,see how it resonates with your
audience. If they don't like it,then maybe pull back.
But if they're receptive to it,if they're commenting,
engaging with it,then maybe you could post
more content like that.
But it's all about trial anderror because you never really
know what's going to work,what's not going to work.
Same with everything withdigital marketing or marketing
in general,you've got to kind of just
(16:37):
throw things at the wall,see what sticks, what resonates,
push that more,pull things away that aren't
working and just continuallysee test.
So did you separate it ordo you have it together?
You talk about your,your sport and the sport hobby
and then you also talk aboutSEO in the same,
(16:59):
on the same platform or didyou separate the profiles?
Yeah, I separated them becausesomebody going for skateboarding
doesn't care about digitalmarketing. Some of them do,
but most of them don'treally care. So yeah,
I got to keep them separateand making it more like a
skateboard. Like a magazine.
So if you go to like a magazinepage, website,
(17:19):
you'll see that everythingis going to be on topic.
They're not going to be crossingover too much.
So that's kind of howI focused it,
is just make it 100% all aboutskateboarding, nothing else.
Maybe a little bit aboutsnowboarding or something like
that, but in general,just keep it focused
on the topic.
So are you monetizing yourskateboarding hobby?
(17:40):
Yep.
So I'm trying to figure out howto monetize it with social
media or with. Yeah,with social and skateboarding,
there's not that muchmoney in it.
So people would say I'll payyou $5 for a shout out.
My page has 340,000 followerson Instagram.
Like $5 is not that much money.
So a lot of people wouldgive me free products,
free stuff all the time,which is nice,
(18:01):
but realized I should tryand monetize it somehow.
So decided to make my ownproduct and make the bearings,
the part that goes in thewheel to help it spin.
So started making those andbecause gotta get creative.
Unfortunately it all comesdown to the niche.
Like with skateboarding,not that much money.
If I was selling likeDetox tees,
these influencers with 10,000followers get paid $5,000
(18:22):
whereas I have over 10 timesmore followers than them and I'm
only getting like fiveor ten dollar offers.
So comes down to I realized whoyour audience is and who
you're promoting too.
Because your audienceisn't gonna.
Yeah just every industry isgoing to be a little different.
So that's also something youmight be a wanna think of before
you just start following yourpassion. As long as.
(18:43):
Because I found my passionjust because I love it,
other than trying to make abusiness out of it because
I have my SEO company.
But if you're trying tofollow your passion,
make a business out of it,which I would recommend,
just make sure that you finda way to some monetization
process.
Maybe think about it ahead oftime because I didn't really
think about the shout outs andall that influencer marketing
that they're not going to paythat much for skateboarding
(19:04):
unfortunately.
Well, clothes people could,some sports clothes definitely
could be what you would promote.
And I know because I even had,and you know,
I just now have a thousandpeople followers on Instagram
because I was not reallyfocusing on it.
But even when I had hundreds,I had people,
(19:24):
some companies write to mebecause they wanted me to
promote some of their apparel,some clothes and I said no
because I didn't want tospend time for that.
But there are so manycompanies that yeah,
they either send you that stufffor free or give you money.
So yeah, that's something foryou to think about.
Yep yep.
(19:44):
Trying to just get creative withit and just think outside the
box and come up with new ideas.
But yeah,definitely I think about how to
monetize it because I havesuch a big following,
it's just sitting there,so got to utilize it somehow.
And I love that you werefollowing your passion basically
and you were not eventhinking about
making a business out of it.
But that is how it happens.
(20:05):
And that's the most beautifulthing is that we just go,
we follow our passion and thenwe see the greatest results
because we're doingwhat we love.
Yep, yep.
It just naturally happens overtime. I mean it's not immediate.
Took me a couple yearsto build it up.
So that's the other thing isgotta have patience with all
this stuff with digitalmarketing and everything. It's.
I mean sometimes you go viraland just take off and explode
(20:27):
but most of the time it's thatslow process of building it and
building it and growing it.
And of course you are an expertin SEO and social
media marketing,so you kind of knew how to grow
that. So tell us please.
First I wanted to askyou about mistakes.
What have you noticed becauseyou watch other people
and you see.
So what is maybe the biggestmistake that people make in
(20:49):
their social media marketingor SEO strategies for social?
Probably trying to be everywherewhere you need to be more of
where your audience is.
Like take a step back.
If you're looking for yourproduct or service,
where would you go?
Like that's number one thingbecause a lot of people spend
too much time on social media.
But you need to focus onwhere your audience is.
(21:10):
That's why I always say crosspromote if you can.
Because for your main platformsor your audiences that you need
to be posting there manually.
But everywhere else you just letit cross promote and then it
just shows that you're active onall these other platforms.
It builds that social proofand that trust factor.
But really just take a step backand think about where
would you be going?
That's the biggest thing.
Okay well so you already kind ofeven answered the next question.
(21:35):
That was the mistake is whenpeople are everywhere and they
don't focus on one thing.
So the tip would be focus on oneplatform and then cross
post on others.
But then what are otherof your tips?
Maybe one or maybe two.
Three for everyone whois on social media.
(21:55):
Because that's number one mainlyI would say especially those
who have businesses,entrepreneurs
to make it really effective andsome really practical tips that
everyone can do and it's easy.
Yeah,I would say having a content
calendar is always helpful.
Just trying to stay a little bitorganized ahead of time.
(22:16):
That will also help youwith the scheduling.
If you use a scheduler,you could have pretty much like,
if you use like Hootsuite orBuffer, there's these,
you have to pay for them butthey'll let you schedule
things out.
So you could schedule out yourentire month or weeks or
whatever you want to post,but you could schedule it all
out and that's going to reallyhelp out by having that content
calendar to visualize andsay like, all right,
(22:38):
Mondays I'm going to do I'mgoing to share a blog post.
On Tuesdays I'm going to share aproduct picture service picture.
On Wednesdays I'll do a review.
On Thursdays we coulddo a giveaway.
On Fridays I'll post someuser generated content.
But just trying to stayorganized helps out because if
you're trying to post all thetime, sometimes it gets tough.
(22:58):
Like even just postingonce a day,
be a little overwhelming attimes where it doesn't
seem that hard,but after you've done it for
months and months and months,you're like, all right,
how do I write this uniquely?
And how do I get morecreative with this?
So scheduling all out,but also looking at what other
people are posting. Posting,finding like trending things in
your industry and evenreposting that stuff,
giving them credit becausesomething's trending
(23:21):
in your industry,it's more than likely going to
trend if you post it on yourpage. So finding that.
But just give credit to people.
Don't just take stuff withouttaking or without giving credit.
Most people are happy to haveyou share their content as long
as you give them credit.
If you don't give them credit,then they're gonna be pretty
upset about it.
But that's a great way becauseif you're ever stuck,
just like I don't knowwhat to post today,
just search your hashtags,see what's trending and you can
(23:43):
repost some of those videos.
That content right there.
Thats nice.
So you recommend when we buildthis calendar and we decide
what we're posting,you recommend to really
have it different.
Not posting,say just a picture with
a quote every day.
But sometimes on Monday therewould be a quote,
(24:05):
on Tuesday there would be a tip,or on Wednesday.
So what is,what is the best strategy?
To have a variety of differentposts like you said?
Yeah.
Kind of testing it out andseeing what works.
So just kind of going at it alllike trying out images,
videos, short videos,longer videos,
(24:25):
and just seeing what resonateswith your audience and whatever
they're more receptive to thenposting more of that content.
But it's all about kind oftesting like we both could have
the same page about running.
My audience is probably going tobe a little bit different
than yours.
So you posting your content,is it going to work?
If I'm posting your content,it's going to have to be
slightly different.
So just try to test it out andreally just see what resonates
(24:46):
best with your audience.
Because they're all slightlydifferent.
Yes That's so true.
Just like for everyone,there could be a different
platform for some peoplein Instagram,
but for other people it'sLinkedIn only or Facebook.
The same with content.
We will have to chooseand test and try.
Okay, perfect. Well,we talked mostly about
(25:09):
social media,so let's just touch a little
bit about SEO.
Because also most peoplethat I know,
the listeners and entrepreneurs,my friends, we have a website.
So of course SEO isreally important.
What is your one biggeststrategy that you recommend
to people?
To make sure thatthere's traffic.
One thing that's not tootechnical is just adding more
(25:32):
content to their website.
More content,you have the better meaning.
Text. Not images or videos,but actual text that's what
Google and the search enginesreally feed off is the more text
you have on every page thatyou want to rank,
the better off you're going tobe. So not just the homepage,
but every page that you wantto rank. So it's really,
really important.
(25:52):
But it has to be originalcontent.
You can't just reuse the samecontent from one page
to another.
It has to be prettymuch 100% unique.
Google doesn't like to deletecontent and will actually
penalize you if you have thesame content on every
single page.
But content is sovery important.
Okay,well that's amazing because I
was thinking I used to writeblogs and then I got
(26:14):
tired of that.
So because I have my podcast,I was thinking I would
be posting podcast.
But words is actually copy,right?
Written copy is whatGoogle wants,
what search optimization reallyneed. So that is a great idea.
We can always transcribe ourpodcasts and post it as blog
(26:35):
posts. That could be,that could be a great
solution for this.
But what do you mean every page?
Because usually what is beingupdated is either blog page with
a blog or with somenews or something.
But usually home page or somekind of sales pages,
they stay the same.
(26:55):
So yeah, once you write thepage it's okay,
but you want to writethat like the.
So when you're promoting yourservices or your products,
you want to put contenton those pages.
So if you're like an E commercewebsite and you're selling like
running shoes and all you haveis pictures of the shoes,
there's no text there or there'svery little text.
So adding more text explainingwhat the benefits of
(27:16):
these shoes are,how they're made or
whatever it is.
But just adding more text tothat category of that page just
could be anywhere on that pagedoesn't have to be at the top
of the page, the middle,the bottom.
But just adding more text isreally going to help out
the search engines.
And same with like the podcastor audio stuff like that.
If you can transcribeit or timestamp it,
(27:36):
some stuff like hour longpodcast or video might be a
little long to transcribethe whole thing,
but you could timestamp it,summarize it with some text
that will really help out.
Such when you're uploading likeYouTube and things like that.
Because they'll try totranscribe the video but
they're not there yet.
Like you'll upload it to YouTubeand they'll try to get the
subtitles, but it's not perfect.
(27:57):
You start to go inthere and fix it.
So they really still relyheavily on that text.
The more content youprovide to them,
the easier it is for them toread and understand that that
page, that video, the audio,whatever it is.
But they really needthat text for now.
Thats good to know. Okay,so we got to have text.
I have one page on my websitewhich is a media page where I
have a lot of pictures of me onother podcasts, plus some text.
(28:20):
But it's good to know thattext is important. Okay,
one more question about this.
My personal question I was I'musing this opportunity
to learn from you.
So you said that it has to beunique and the Google does
really like when we have copies.
So I have two differentwebsites.
One is my company's website andanother one is my personal name,
(28:40):
personal brand pot websiteas Natasha Basilevich.
And I have a book that I'mselling and it was always
on my company website.
And then I decided, well,it was doing pretty well,
I want to put it on my name,my personal name website.
Is that a mistake?
Should I not do that because itwill be the same text and
(29:03):
Google will just block both ofthem or what would you recommend
in this case?
So whoever publishes it first,they get all the credit.
So if I post an article on mywebsite and then you copy
it on your website,then I'd get all the credit
because Google saw thatI published it first.
So whoever published it first,they got the credit.
Everyone else is potentiallygoing to, they're not going
(29:24):
to rank for it.
Google's going to potentiallypenalize you,
but you're not going to be ableto rank because you're searching
on Google for like let's say howto fix a flat tire for my car.
And 10 articles appear thatare all the same.
It's not a good user experience.
It's not going to help you out.
So you want 10 differentwebsites,
different perspectives,different point of views.
So whoever publishes the contentfirst, they all the credit.
(29:45):
So if you want to rewrite thesummary of the book or whatever
it is that's on one websiteor another,
as long as you rewrite it,that's perfectly fine.
Like you could be sellinglike Amazon or websites,
they sell the same products,multiple websites,
we sell them the same products.
It's just writing somewhatunique description.
Reviews also help out becausereviews are content that
(30:06):
people are writing.
So that's unique content that'swritten on each page or,
or written as review that'sgoing to help out as well.
That's why I love,that's why a lot of these
websites have the reviewsenabled or comments sometimes
enabled because it just addsmore text, more content.
Okay well that's a great point.
So if I want to sellit on my other.
(30:27):
Because both of these are mine,but if I wanted to sell
on my personal website,then I would have to rewrite the
copy, make it unique, right?
Yep. Yeah, rewrite it all.
Unfortunately, can't reuse it,but as long as you rewrite it,
you're good to go.
Yes, well, good point.
Perfect. Wow,this is really interesting.
And I understand that socialmedia marketing and SEO can help
(30:51):
us so much in our business.
And you have.
Before I ask you my favoritequestion that I ask everybody,
I want to make sure thatpeople can find you.
So you have a gift for them.
You have on your website.
You have a specialfreebie for our listeners.
What is it? Could you tell us?
So if they go to my website,seoptimizers,
(31:14):
uh.com that's S E O O-P T I I ZE R S.com gift they could
find that there,which is all my classes I've
done over the years.
So if they want to learn more,I put those up there on my
website and they want aconsultation because with
digital marketing it's notreally one size fits all.
(31:34):
So I'm happy to do a freeconsultation and look at your
website, see what's working,what's not working,
and how to get you to the levelthat you want to be at.
And they could find all thatinformation there.
Perfect. Yes. That's great.
And also,is that the best place you would
refer people to your website orInstagram because that's
your favorite platform.
(31:56):
I would say the website's thebest because social is always
great. But you're always,I always tell people you're just
kind of renting space off allthese platforms. So everything,
you really want to sendeverything to your website and
then use social to help buildthat trust and build
that credibility.
But because you never knowwhat's going to happen,
they could take your page downor reach an engagement drop.
So a lot of people focused onlike Facebook over the years and
(32:19):
now Facebook is kindof on the decline,
whereas maybe they should havefocused on other platforms
or kept those other ones.
But I always tell people yourwebsite is yours, you own that,
you get full control of that andyou always want to try to send
all the traffic there.
Same with like the podcastand things like that.
Put it all on your websitebecause that's what you own.
Everything else, like Spotify,itunes, Stitcher,
(32:39):
they could take it down,remove it,
and it's not there anymore.
It's gone.
That's true. That's true.
That's not our home.
The website is basicallyour digital home.
That's how I see it too.
Thank you so much, Brandon.
Well,now I want to invite you to
imagine that you are on thestage where the whole world is
listening and youhave 60 seconds.
(33:00):
What will you say to the world?
I would say that everyone needsto be a little bit nicer
to everyone.
Try to spread that positivity,the love and the generosity.
But also that we should helpeveryone get access to water.
It's pretty important,getting clean, drinkable water.
If we could all just helpout and do that,
I think that would really helpthe world out a lot.
(33:22):
Just being better person,better people.
But helping everyone out,getting access to water because
it's so very important.
We are native water.
Water is life. And fortunately,not many people have access
to clean, drinkable water.
And that would be something thatI think we could all get
together and helpeach other out.
If we're all listening onthe stage together,
I think that could be somethingthat would resonate.
(33:44):
Yeah,that's beautiful because I love
when people have this causein their heart,
something that theyreally care about.
And I can see that youcare about that.
It's important to have somethingspecific that you would
invite people to do,that you would inspire,
that you do yourself or youcare about yourself.
So thank you so much.
(34:04):
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you, Brandon.
And for all of you,my dear friends, remember,
you can go to SEO optimizers.comand find the gift from
brandon.sl gift.
Or even just go.
Go to the website and findall the information.
Go to Instagram.
We will put all the links in theshow notes so you can click and
follow Brandon. And remember,you have a wonderful message
(34:29):
in your heart.
So go out there into the world,share it, and always,
always speak with power.
Hello my friend.
Welcome to Speak with Powerpodcast. I'm Natasha Basilevic,
a business trainer,speaker and public
speaking coach.
I teach entrepreneurs andexecutives all over the world
to build confidence,craft their clear message and
deliver it with power.
Would you love to master yourpresentation skills,
(00:21):
learn how to speak withpersuasion and get inspiration
from powerful speakersall around the globe?
Then stay tuned and don'tforget to subscribe.
Welcome back to Speak withPower, my dear friends,
and today have another amazingguest for you,
Brandon Leibowitz.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizer since 2007.
(00:45):
It's a digital marketing companythat focuses on helping small
and medium sized businessesget more online traffic,
which in turn converts intoclients, sales, leads and so on.
Welcome Brandon.
Thanks for having me on today.
It's really great to haveyou with us. And first,
of course I want to know,we want to know your story.
(01:07):
Tell us,how did you get into SEO?
How did you get into socialmedia marketing and so on?
Yeah,I just kind of stumbled upon it
after I graduated from college,got my degree in business
marketing and the first job Igot out of school was helping a
company out with their digitalmarketing, doing SEO,
helping out with social media,helping out with paid ads,
(01:30):
taking pictures of products,kind of doing it all.
And just realized back thenthat this is in 2007,
everyone's probably going tohave a website in the future.
And everything I mentioned worksto get traffic. It's just SEO.
Search engine optimization iswhere to get free traffic.
So I focused on that onea little bit more.
But everything definitelydoes work.
(01:51):
Perfect So what reallyfascinates you about this?
Because I assume that youlove your job, right?
You enjoy what you, you do.
What is the most enjoyablepart of it?
Watching businesses grow,helping them succeed and helping
them get to that next level.
That's probably the.
And Google changes all the time,so it's not the same thing over
(02:11):
and over again because thatwould get a little mundane
and boring.
So Google's always changing andit makes it kind of like a game
trying to figure out howthey're working.
Interesting Now you saidthat it's changing,
Google changes and I'msure social media,
all the social media platforms,they keep changing their
algorithm, keep,how do you keep,
keep track of it always and howdo you make sure that you don't,
(02:34):
don't lose any new thingsthat appear.
It is a lot of just reading,testing things out,
reading blogs, articles,joining like Facebook groups or
forums or wherever you couldinteract with other people that
are doing what you're doing.
So I find other people that doan SEO to figure out what's
going on with Google,Find other people that are
(02:56):
focused on social media tofigure out what's going on with
social because they're allchanging, they're all different,
it's not the same,it's not a one size fits all.
Every platform is going to bedifferent on how they operate,
how they work.
So just trying to kindof piece it together,
but nobody really knows how itworks because they keep
it top secret.
So it's just kind of look attiny things that we see help
(03:17):
out or don't help out,but you really don't know
for the most part.
Oh really? So it is top secret.
They don't reveal everything,they just reveal some things.
And mostly.
So what about you expertslike you,
you guess or you just look fromyour experience you get certain
conclusions that oh,this is what they changed.
(03:38):
Oh, that's how it works.
Trial and error.
But usually when they change,like what Google's doing
is cleaning up spam.
So they're findingpeople have game.
The system found loopholes andways to rank their quickly
without doing the things thatGoogle wants you to do.
So most of the time it's notreally changing how you have
to operate your website.
(03:58):
It's just making sure thatyou're not doing anything shady
or weird or unethical.
So you could read Googlewebmaster guidelines.
They'll tell you whatthey're looking for,
what they're not looking for.
Sometimes they'll tell you, hey,we're going to change
the algorithm.
If your website loads slowly,that's not good.
So little things likethat or mobile,
if your website's notmobile friendly,
(04:18):
we're not going to showyou on mobile devices.
Those are just kind of basicones where they'll tell you that
because they want a gooduser experience,
they want people to be able toaccess websites from
all over the place.
And if someone's on a cell phoneand they click on your website
and it's really hard to read,you have to like zoom in.
Not a good user experience.
So Google wants you to make it agood user experience for people
so your website looks quickly,it's easy to see everything on
(04:41):
mobile because if not they'regoing to hit that back button
and if that back enough times,they're probably going to leave
Google and go to like Bing orDuckDuckGo or another search
engine because they're just notgetting what they're
looking for.
I wonder if anybody actuallygoes to any other search engine.
I don't even know becausewe used to have Yahoo.
We,we used to have some others that
right now I can't even think ofthem. But now it's just Google.
(05:05):
I don't know if anybody goes.
Do you ever go to anyother search engine?
I don't,but I look in analytics and
I see some people go to.
So like Google will bring inlike 20 to 80% of your traffic.
Bing might bring 1%,Yahoo might bring 1%.
So it's not that big.
But I've worked at agencieswhere we had clients that were
(05:27):
getting like 5,000 visitors aday. So that 1% is a big number.
But if you're a small mediumsized business and you're only
getting like 20 people doyour website a day,
1% isn't that significant.
So but it does add up over timeand it does help out.
But majority of the peoplethey're searching on Google
unless they get tricked intousing like Bing or Yahoo.
Sometimes you're on a website oron a phone or something and it
(05:49):
searches on Bing and you'relike why am I on Bing?
But other than that most peopleusually go to Google.
Yes. Yeah,it's amazing actually how Google
became this go to place and,and everyone.
It's sometimes it fascinates mehow this happens when one
brand really takesthe market. So then, okay,
(06:11):
let's talk about social mediabecause that's where most of
entrepreneurs operate.
I mean of course some peoplepay for Google Ads,
but everyone needs tobe on social media.
Some people might notlike Facebook,
so they will be on Instagram,others might not like
any of those.
So they would be on LinkedIn.
But we all need to knowhow that works.
Would you recommend toentrepreneurs who are not really
(06:35):
experts in that to also readjust like you do read blogs and
articles or do you recommend tofind someone else who would
do it for them?
Or they can even just findinformation without necessarily
spending time for that.
It just depends how much timethey want to invest in doing it.
If they want to learn a newfield they could go for it.
(06:57):
But most of the time it's betterto hire someone or do
it in conjunction.
Hire someone that's going tohelp you out and you do it
because the more that you'reworking on it,
the more traction you get,the quicker you're going to get
those results andthose rankings.
But it just comes down toultimately knowing who your
audience is to try to figure outwho is Your audience and where
(07:17):
are they going to be?
Are they going tobe on Instagram?
Are they going to be on Twitter?
Are they on TikTok?
Are they on Google?
Are they on Yelp or TripAdvisor?
Where are they?
Because you need to be infront of your audience.
That's number one,is not trying to be everywhere,
which I see a lot of peoplespreading themselves too thin,
especially with social media,trying to be on every platform,
which is good to, like,claim your username and maybe
(07:38):
have a presence on them.
But being active onevery platform,
if your audience isn't on there,you don't necessarily
need to be there.
It's good to claim it because itadds social proof. It puts,
like, a face beyond the company.
Social media is really like,hey, we're a business.
You could buy off us on ourwebsite. But like, 10,
15 years ago,a lot of people didn't trust
(07:59):
buying online. Like,there might have been this
website, Bob's TVs,that had been around
for maybe 60 years.
But you're just like,who's Bob's TVs?
I'd rather buy a TV offAmazon or Best Buy,
because I know these bigcorporate brands.
But then Facebook and Socialcame around saying, hey,
we could put a face beyond thecompany and let people engage
with you, ask questions,read reviews,
(08:21):
see status updates.
So then you're like, oh,maybe Bob's TV's is trustworthy.
I could buy off them,even though I've never
heard of them,but they've been around longer
than Amazon and stuff like that.
So social is really good forbuilding trust on people.
Yeah, okay, that's powerful.
Now how would we buildthat trust?
What are your recommendations tomake sure that on any platform,
(08:42):
any social media platform,people trust us.
That would be getting orgiving good value,
giving good content out there,not just promoting yourself all
the time but letting people knowthat you're an industry expert,
that you're, you know,what you're talking about
offering good value.
Because if you're just tryingto sell yourself,
promote yourself all the time,nobody's going to want to follow
(09:05):
that page. So, like,some platforms let you put
reviews. Like Facebook,you can get reviews.
So that's a great way is getthose reviews that people could
just see right there,five stars or four stars or
whatever it is. But, you know,not all the platforms
allow reviews.
So it's more of you puttingyourself out there and letting
people know that you really areknowledgeable, you're helpful,
(09:25):
you respond to comments,messages, things like that.
Just be engaging.
Yes And there arerecommendations on LinkedIn.
I don't know if there's anythinglike that on Instagram.
I don't think so.
Maybe you know,But I know on LinkedIn it really
works when someone endorsesyou or someone gives you a
recommendation and then you haveseveral of those, then yes,
(09:47):
that works too.
Yep, yep,those look really good.
But yeah,LinkedIn lets you do it.
Facebook gives you the reviews.
But Instagram, Pinterest,TikTok,
Twitter don't really do it.
YouTube gets you like the thumbsup so you can see those.
So that's a little something,a little social proof there.
But usually yeah, they're.
(10:07):
It's tricky.
I mean I guess you couldlook at likes,
that could be kind of a signal.
Likes, retweets, favorites,things like that.
Do you have a favorite platform?
I like Instagram,but again it's all about knowing
who your audience is.
So I love skateboardingand sports videos.
Skateboarding is reallybig on Instagram,
so I love that platform.
(10:29):
And Instagram kind of crossesover to all the other platforms.
So the way I like to do is kindof picking one pick like a
central platform and thenletting it cross promote.
So you post on Instagram andthen using tools like Zapier,
a free website.
There's a paid version of it,but it's free and it'll
let you cross promote.
So anytime I post on Instagram,it'll automatically post
(10:50):
on YouTube, on Twitter,on LinkedIn, on Pinterest,
on my own website.
It'll go kind of everywhere withthe click of a button.
I mean sometimes it doesn'talways work.
From Instagram to Twitter,usernames don't always work,
so you got to cleanthat stuff up.
But it helps save a lot of time.
And I always tell people,try to pick one central
platform,use as your central hub and then
(11:10):
kind of like let everything elsecross promote if it works.
Yes, yes. I love that.
That's the way I dowith Facebook.
I post on Facebook and then Ihave people who do that for me,
they just repost.
Actually don't even use Zapier.
That's a good idea.
So because I use Zapierfor connecting
my calendly and my Google,my Gmail and my type form.
(11:35):
So there is.
It I do use it for some things,but I didn't know that
it can do that also.
So it can actually send.
Zapier is great tool. Free.
I mean the paid version is socheap and it saves
hours of time.
Like the way I do it with socialprobably saves me hours of time
every single day or week becauseI don't have to manually go into
(11:56):
Facebook, on Instagram,on Twitter, on YouTube,
on Pinterest.
I just go to one platformand post from there.
And I usually scheduleeverything out too.
So with Instagram or whateverplatform you're on,
you get to scheduleeverything out.
So I'll just sit there early orat the beginning of the month
and schedule out all the poststhat I want to post
on Instagram.
Then it's going to cross promoteall the other platforms and then
(12:17):
all I have to do is go in andread review or messages or if
there's something topical ortimely then I could post that.
But other than that,can I just like sit back,
let it kind of post on its ownand focus on other things?
Well, do they work though?
Because if you post on oneplatform and I know that in on
some platforms they just havedifferent expectations of even
(12:40):
what kind of content we post oreven visually it has to be
a little bit different.
Does that work for you?
Do you take that intoconsideration?
Or you just post and let it go?
So it doesn't always worklike you're saying,
like if you're posting fromInstagram to TikTok,
they can see that they don'twant you to share something
(13:00):
from Instagram to TikTok.
So they'll kind of drop thatreach or engagement
a little bit.
It's kind of tough to reallygauge if they do it or not.
But I've seen when I do post,it doesn't reach as well versus
me natively posting onthose platforms.
But you can schedulethem all out too.
So you can use schedulersfor all these platforms.
But sometimes.
So like I have a skateboardingpage, love skateboarding.
(13:20):
And made that as a littlepassion project on the side
because I was like helped outall these companies
over the years.
How about I help myself out andfollow what I love? And man,
Instagram page it grew to couplehundred thousand followers which
kind of didn't expect usto grow that quickly.
But then I realized let me justhave everything cross promote.
So every time I post onInstagram it posts to YouTube.
If it's a video that grew to17,000 subscribers without me
(13:44):
ever really manually postinga video in there.
It posts to Facebookautomatically and Facebook
grew to 50,000 likes.
I mean maybe it translated overbecause I had a big following
on Instagram,but same with Twitter.
I have Instagram post to Twitterand it grew to like 45,
000 followers.
So you never know whereyour audience is at.
And I didn't think all theseplatforms would be where
(14:04):
my audience is.
So I'm not like trying to makeit the perfect content because I
know my real audience isreally on Instagram.
That's where I'm focused mainly.
But letting it cross,promote it works for
the most part.
But it would be better to go inand really touch everything up,
clean it up. Because every,like you said,
every platform is slightlydifferent.
They're looking at differentthings, colors, sizes,
dimensions, things like that,length of the videos.
(14:27):
They're all slightly different.
Yes. Because even the size,if on Instagram it could
be this story size,then on YouTube probably won't
work because it has to be.
Unless you are actually shootingyour videos horizontally.
Yeah, that's,that's really interesting that
you basically didn't,didn't do anything or any like,
(14:49):
not much effort.
You just posted on Instagram,but all other platforms
benefited from that or yourprofiles and other platforms.
Well, that's amazing.
And you just touched this reallyinteresting point about social
media marketing is using our ownhobbies and interests and some
passion projects that are notmaybe even connected to our
(15:12):
business for showing who we are.
Could you talk a little bitabout the value of that,
of using?
Because sometimes peoplemight think, oh, well,
how is that connected? Okay,I am a, well, I'm a runner,
so I do use that onmy social media.
Sometimes people might think,oh, well, I am I love cooking,
but I sell, I,I help people with advertising
(15:33):
or whatever or, or I teach,I coach.
So how is that connected?
It's not.
So I shouldn't reallypost about it.
Share your thoughts on that.
So yeah,I've thought about that too.
And usually I would say separatethem if it's, if it's similar,
like cooking and running,they're both kind of about
health, wellness,so it could overlap
a little bit.
But if it's like cooking andan auto body mechanic shop,
(15:56):
that might be a littletoo far off.
So if it's somewhat related,it's okay.
But following your passions isalways going to be the best
because that's where you reallyshow your authenticity,
your knowledge, your,your expertise.
But it just comes down tohow related are they?
If they're not really related.
I might want to separate them.
But if there's some overlap,then go for it.
And also just test it out.
(16:16):
You never know what's going towork, what's not going to work.
So try it out,see how it resonates with your
audience. If they don't like it,then maybe pull back.
But if they're receptive to it,if they're commenting,
engaging with it,then maybe you could post
more content like that.
But it's all about trial anderror because you never really
know what's going to work,what's not going to work.
Same with everything withdigital marketing or marketing
in general,you've got to kind of just
(16:37):
throw things at the wall,see what sticks, what resonates,
push that more,pull things away that aren't
working and just continuallysee test.
So did you separate it ordo you have it together?
You talk about your,your sport and the sport hobby
and then you also talk aboutSEO in the same,
(16:59):
on the same platform or didyou separate the profiles?
Yeah, I separated them becausesomebody going for skateboarding
doesn't care about digitalmarketing. Some of them do,
but most of them don'treally care. So yeah,
I got to keep them separateand making it more like a
skateboard. Like a magazine.
So if you go to like a magazinepage, website,
(17:19):
you'll see that everythingis going to be on topic.
They're not going to be crossingover too much.
So that's kind of howI focused it,
is just make it 100% all aboutskateboarding, nothing else.
Maybe a little bit aboutsnowboarding or something like
that, but in general,just keep it focused
on the topic.
So are you monetizing yourskateboarding hobby?
(17:40):
Yep.
So I'm trying to figure out howto monetize it with social
media or with. Yeah,with social and skateboarding,
there's not that muchmoney in it.
So people would say I'll payyou $5 for a shout out.
My page has 340,000 followerson Instagram.
Like $5 is not that much money.
So a lot of people wouldgive me free products,
free stuff all the time,which is nice,
(18:01):
but realized I should tryand monetize it somehow.
So decided to make my ownproduct and make the bearings,
the part that goes in thewheel to help it spin.
So started making those andbecause gotta get creative.
Unfortunately it all comesdown to the niche.
Like with skateboarding,not that much money.
If I was selling likeDetox tees,
these influencers with 10,000followers get paid $5,000
(18:22):
whereas I have over 10 timesmore followers than them and I'm
only getting like fiveor ten dollar offers.
So comes down to I realized whoyour audience is and who
you're promoting too.
Because your audienceisn't gonna.
Yeah just every industry isgoing to be a little different.
So that's also something youmight be a wanna think of before
you just start following yourpassion. As long as.
(18:43):
Because I found my passionjust because I love it,
other than trying to make abusiness out of it because
I have my SEO company.
But if you're trying tofollow your passion,
make a business out of it,which I would recommend,
just make sure that you finda way to some monetization
process.
Maybe think about it ahead oftime because I didn't really
think about the shout outs andall that influencer marketing
that they're not going to paythat much for skateboarding
(19:04):
unfortunately.
Well, clothes people could,some sports clothes definitely
could be what you would promote.
And I know because I even had,and you know,
I just now have a thousandpeople followers on Instagram
because I was not reallyfocusing on it.
But even when I had hundreds,I had people,
(19:24):
some companies write to mebecause they wanted me to
promote some of their apparel,some clothes and I said no
because I didn't want tospend time for that.
But there are so manycompanies that yeah,
they either send you that stufffor free or give you money.
So yeah, that's something foryou to think about.
Yep yep.
(19:44):
Trying to just get creative withit and just think outside the
box and come up with new ideas.
But yeah,definitely I think about how to
monetize it because I havesuch a big following,
it's just sitting there,so got to utilize it somehow.
And I love that you werefollowing your passion basically
and you were not eventhinking about
making a business out of it.
But that is how it happens.
(20:05):
And that's the most beautifulthing is that we just go,
we follow our passion and thenwe see the greatest results
because we're doingwhat we love.
Yep, yep.
It just naturally happens overtime. I mean it's not immediate.
Took me a couple yearsto build it up.
So that's the other thing isgotta have patience with all
this stuff with digitalmarketing and everything. It's.
I mean sometimes you go viraland just take off and explode
(20:27):
but most of the time it's thatslow process of building it and
building it and growing it.
And of course you are an expertin SEO and social
media marketing,so you kind of knew how to grow
that. So tell us please.
First I wanted to askyou about mistakes.
What have you noticed becauseyou watch other people
and you see.
So what is maybe the biggestmistake that people make in
(20:49):
their social media marketingor SEO strategies for social?
Probably trying to be everywherewhere you need to be more of
where your audience is.
Like take a step back.
If you're looking for yourproduct or service,
where would you go?
Like that's number one thingbecause a lot of people spend
too much time on social media.
But you need to focus onwhere your audience is.
(21:10):
That's why I always say crosspromote if you can.
Because for your main platformsor your audiences that you need
to be posting there manually.
But everywhere else you just letit cross promote and then it
just shows that you're active onall these other platforms.
It builds that social proofand that trust factor.
But really just take a step backand think about where
would you be going?
That's the biggest thing.
Okay well so you already kind ofeven answered the next question.
(21:35):
That was the mistake is whenpeople are everywhere and they
don't focus on one thing.
So the tip would be focus on oneplatform and then cross
post on others.
But then what are otherof your tips?
Maybe one or maybe two.
Three for everyone whois on social media.
(21:55):
Because that's number one mainlyI would say especially those
who have businesses,entrepreneurs
to make it really effective andsome really practical tips that
everyone can do and it's easy.
Yeah,I would say having a content
calendar is always helpful.
Just trying to stay a little bitorganized ahead of time.
(22:16):
That will also help youwith the scheduling.
If you use a scheduler,you could have pretty much like,
if you use like Hootsuite orBuffer, there's these,
you have to pay for them butthey'll let you schedule
things out.
So you could schedule out yourentire month or weeks or
whatever you want to post,but you could schedule it all
out and that's going to reallyhelp out by having that content
calendar to visualize andsay like, all right,
(22:38):
Mondays I'm going to do I'mgoing to share a blog post.
On Tuesdays I'm going to share aproduct picture service picture.
On Wednesdays I'll do a review.
On Thursdays we coulddo a giveaway.
On Fridays I'll post someuser generated content.
But just trying to stayorganized helps out because if
you're trying to post all thetime, sometimes it gets tough.
(22:58):
Like even just postingonce a day,
be a little overwhelming attimes where it doesn't
seem that hard,but after you've done it for
months and months and months,you're like, all right,
how do I write this uniquely?
And how do I get morecreative with this?
So scheduling all out,but also looking at what other
people are posting. Posting,finding like trending things in
your industry and evenreposting that stuff,
giving them credit becausesomething's trending
(23:21):
in your industry,it's more than likely going to
trend if you post it on yourpage. So finding that.
But just give credit to people.
Don't just take stuff withouttaking or without giving credit.
Most people are happy to haveyou share their content as long
as you give them credit.
If you don't give them credit,then they're gonna be pretty
upset about it.
But that's a great way becauseif you're ever stuck,
just like I don't knowwhat to post today,
just search your hashtags,see what's trending and you can
(23:43):
repost some of those videos.
That content right there.
Thats nice.
So you recommend when we buildthis calendar and we decide
what we're posting,you recommend to really
have it different.
Not posting,say just a picture with
a quote every day.
But sometimes on Monday therewould be a quote,
(24:05):
on Tuesday there would be a tip,or on Wednesday.
So what is,what is the best strategy?
To have a variety of differentposts like you said?
Yeah.
Kind of testing it out andseeing what works.
So just kind of going at it alllike trying out images,
videos, short videos,longer videos,
(24:25):
and just seeing what resonateswith your audience and whatever
they're more receptive to thenposting more of that content.
But it's all about kind oftesting like we both could have
the same page about running.
My audience is probably going tobe a little bit different
than yours.
So you posting your content,is it going to work?
If I'm posting your content,it's going to have to be
slightly different.
So just try to test it out andreally just see what resonates
(24:46):
best with your audience.
Because they're all slightlydifferent.
Yes That's so true.
Just like for everyone,there could be a different
platform for some peoplein Instagram,
but for other people it'sLinkedIn only or Facebook.
The same with content.
We will have to chooseand test and try.
Okay, perfect. Well,we talked mostly about
(25:09):
social media,so let's just touch a little
bit about SEO.
Because also most peoplethat I know,
the listeners and entrepreneurs,my friends, we have a website.
So of course SEO isreally important.
What is your one biggeststrategy that you recommend
to people?
To make sure thatthere's traffic.
One thing that's not tootechnical is just adding more
(25:32):
content to their website.
More content,you have the better meaning.
Text. Not images or videos,but actual text that's what
Google and the search enginesreally feed off is the more text
you have on every page thatyou want to rank,
the better off you're going tobe. So not just the homepage,
but every page that you wantto rank. So it's really,
really important.
(25:52):
But it has to be originalcontent.
You can't just reuse the samecontent from one page
to another.
It has to be prettymuch 100% unique.
Google doesn't like to deletecontent and will actually
penalize you if you have thesame content on every
single page.
But content is sovery important.
Okay,well that's amazing because I
was thinking I used to writeblogs and then I got
(26:14):
tired of that.
So because I have my podcast,I was thinking I would
be posting podcast.
But words is actually copy,right?
Written copy is whatGoogle wants,
what search optimization reallyneed. So that is a great idea.
We can always transcribe ourpodcasts and post it as blog
(26:35):
posts. That could be,that could be a great
solution for this.
But what do you mean every page?
Because usually what is beingupdated is either blog page with
a blog or with somenews or something.
But usually home page or somekind of sales pages,
they stay the same.
(26:55):
So yeah, once you write thepage it's okay,
but you want to writethat like the.
So when you're promoting yourservices or your products,
you want to put contenton those pages.
So if you're like an E commercewebsite and you're selling like
running shoes and all you haveis pictures of the shoes,
there's no text there or there'svery little text.
So adding more text explainingwhat the benefits of
(27:16):
these shoes are,how they're made or
whatever it is.
But just adding more text tothat category of that page just
could be anywhere on that pagedoesn't have to be at the top
of the page, the middle,the bottom.
But just adding more text isreally going to help out
the search engines.
And same with like the podcastor audio stuff like that.
If you can transcribeit or timestamp it,
(27:36):
some stuff like hour longpodcast or video might be a
little long to transcribethe whole thing,
but you could timestamp it,summarize it with some text
that will really help out.
Such when you're uploading likeYouTube and things like that.
Because they'll try totranscribe the video but
they're not there yet.
Like you'll upload it to YouTubeand they'll try to get the
subtitles, but it's not perfect.
(27:57):
You start to go inthere and fix it.
So they really still relyheavily on that text.
The more content youprovide to them,
the easier it is for them toread and understand that that
page, that video, the audio,whatever it is.
But they really needthat text for now.
Thats good to know. Okay,so we got to have text.
I have one page on my websitewhich is a media page where I
have a lot of pictures of me onother podcasts, plus some text.
(28:20):
But it's good to know thattext is important. Okay,
one more question about this.
My personal question I was I'musing this opportunity
to learn from you.
So you said that it has to beunique and the Google does
really like when we have copies.
So I have two differentwebsites.
One is my company's website andanother one is my personal name,
(28:40):
personal brand pot websiteas Natasha Basilevich.
And I have a book that I'mselling and it was always
on my company website.
And then I decided, well,it was doing pretty well,
I want to put it on my name,my personal name website.
Is that a mistake?
Should I not do that because itwill be the same text and
(29:03):
Google will just block both ofthem or what would you recommend
in this case?
So whoever publishes it first,they get all the credit.
So if I post an article on mywebsite and then you copy
it on your website,then I'd get all the credit
because Google saw thatI published it first.
So whoever published it first,they got the credit.
Everyone else is potentiallygoing to, they're not going
(29:24):
to rank for it.
Google's going to potentiallypenalize you,
but you're not going to be ableto rank because you're searching
on Google for like let's say howto fix a flat tire for my car.
And 10 articles appear thatare all the same.
It's not a good user experience.
It's not going to help you out.
So you want 10 differentwebsites,
different perspectives,different point of views.
So whoever publishes the contentfirst, they all the credit.
(29:45):
So if you want to rewrite thesummary of the book or whatever
it is that's on one websiteor another,
as long as you rewrite it,that's perfectly fine.
Like you could be sellinglike Amazon or websites,
they sell the same products,multiple websites,
we sell them the same products.
It's just writing somewhatunique description.
Reviews also help out becausereviews are content that
(30:06):
people are writing.
So that's unique content that'swritten on each page or,
or written as review that'sgoing to help out as well.
That's why I love,that's why a lot of these
websites have the reviewsenabled or comments sometimes
enabled because it just addsmore text, more content.
Okay well that's a great point.
So if I want to sellit on my other.
(30:27):
Because both of these are mine,but if I wanted to sell
on my personal website,then I would have to rewrite the
copy, make it unique, right?
Yep. Yeah, rewrite it all.
Unfortunately, can't reuse it,but as long as you rewrite it,
you're good to go.
Yes, well, good point.
Perfect. Wow,this is really interesting.
And I understand that socialmedia marketing and SEO can help
(30:51):
us so much in our business.
And you have.
Before I ask you my favoritequestion that I ask everybody,
I want to make sure thatpeople can find you.
So you have a gift for them.
You have on your website.
You have a specialfreebie for our listeners.
What is it? Could you tell us?
So if they go to my website,seoptimizers,
(31:14):
uh.com that's S E O O-P T I I ZE R S.com gift they could
find that there,which is all my classes I've
done over the years.
So if they want to learn more,I put those up there on my
website and they want aconsultation because with
digital marketing it's notreally one size fits all.
(31:34):
So I'm happy to do a freeconsultation and look at your
website, see what's working,what's not working,
and how to get you to the levelthat you want to be at.
And they could find all thatinformation there.
Perfect. Yes. That's great.
And also,is that the best place you would
refer people to your website orInstagram because that's
your favorite platform.
(31:56):
I would say the website's thebest because social is always
great. But you're always,I always tell people you're just
kind of renting space off allthese platforms. So everything,
you really want to sendeverything to your website and
then use social to help buildthat trust and build
that credibility.
But because you never knowwhat's going to happen,
they could take your page downor reach an engagement drop.
So a lot of people focused onlike Facebook over the years and
(32:19):
now Facebook is kindof on the decline,
whereas maybe they should havefocused on other platforms
or kept those other ones.
But I always tell people yourwebsite is yours, you own that,
you get full control of that andyou always want to try to send
all the traffic there.
Same with like the podcastand things like that.
Put it all on your websitebecause that's what you own.
Everything else, like Spotify,itunes, Stitcher,
(32:39):
they could take it down,remove it,
and it's not there anymore.
It's gone.
That's true. That's true.
That's not our home.
The website is basicallyour digital home.
That's how I see it too.
Thank you so much, Brandon.
Well,now I want to invite you to
imagine that you are on thestage where the whole world is
listening and youhave 60 seconds.
(33:00):
What will you say to the world?
I would say that everyone needsto be a little bit nicer
to everyone.
Try to spread that positivity,the love and the generosity.
But also that we should helpeveryone get access to water.
It's pretty important,getting clean, drinkable water.
If we could all just helpout and do that,
I think that would really helpthe world out a lot.
(33:22):
Just being better person,better people.
But helping everyone out,getting access to water because
it's so very important.
We are native water.
Water is life. And fortunately,not many people have access
to clean, drinkable water.
And that would be something thatI think we could all get
together and helpeach other out.
If we're all listening onthe stage together,
I think that could be somethingthat would resonate.
(33:44):
Yeah,that's beautiful because I love
when people have this causein their heart,
something that theyreally care about.
And I can see that youcare about that.
It's important to have somethingspecific that you would
invite people to do,that you would inspire,
that you do yourself or youcare about yourself.
So thank you so much.
(34:04):
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you, Brandon.
And for all of you,my dear friends, remember,
you can go to SEO optimizers.comand find the gift from
brandon.sl gift.
Or even just go.
Go to the website and findall the information.
Go to Instagram.
We will put all the links in theshow notes so you can click and
follow Brandon. And remember,you have a wonderful message
(34:29):
in your heart.
So go out there into the world,share it, and always,
always speak with power.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.