Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello there and
welcome to the next episode of
Overcome Yourself, the podcast.
As you know, my name is Nicoleand I'm so excited to be here
today with you, with Brandon,and Brandon is an expert in SEO.
Ooh, the very mysterious, butnot really.
But a lot of business ownersseems to find it very mysterious
(00:23):
SEO, and so, before I butcherwhat you do, brandon, I'm going
to go ahead and let you take itaway.
Please, let us know who you areand who you help.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
My name is Brandon
Leibowitz and I help business
owners or anyone with a websiteget more traffic to your website
website get more traffic toyour website.
So if you have a website andyou're looking to get more
visibility and exposure to it, Imake sure that people find you
whenever they're searching,whether it's on Google or Yelp
(00:55):
or Amazon or YouTube or ChatGPT,anywhere that someone's
searching.
There's ways to try to optimizeto help you rank higher without
spending money on ads.
That's really the main goal ofsearch engine optimization is to
get you that visibility, butwithout having to pay for each
click, because you can spendmoney to get up there.
(01:16):
But those ads can be.
They get expensive over time.
Where it could be, you have topay for each click.
Each click could be a couplecents per click.
It could be a couple dollars.
I've seen it be a couplehundred dollars for one visitor.
That's where it gets a littlepricey.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
But SEO is going to
get you that free traffic?
Yeah, absolutely, and I alwaysencourage my clients.
You know, throw money behindwhat works.
And so we figure out what worksthrough organic methods like
SEO.
And so if a keyword is workingreally, really well, then now we
can superpower it with some adsand we don't have to experiment
(01:54):
right, Because what gets reallyexpensive is the
experimentation with the ads.
And then now we run intoproblems because you're like oh
no, I didn't know that this wasthis plus this, plus all these
other factors come in, and thenat the end of're like, oh no, I
didn't know that this was thisplus this was all these other
factors come in, and then at theend of the month, yeah, there's
a lot of money in ads, but wedon't have to go down that route
.
So can you give me a quickrundown?
(02:15):
You know how do you explain SEOto your clients.
Like what, what is it?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
It is getting you on
Google.
Primarily, when you search,there's ads at the top.
Those are all paid ads.
Right below the ads are theorganic, those free listings,
and SEO is really getting you inthose free listings on Google.
But there's lots of otherplaces that people search, so it
doesn't just have to be Google.
It could be anywhere thatsomeone is searching.
(02:44):
There's ways to try to optimizeand make sure you get that
visibility, because you want totry to be everywhere, but you
don't need to be everywhere.
You just need to be where youraudience is and that's where you
got to figure out are they onGoogle, are they on Instagram?
Are they on YouTube?
Are they on listening to TV,are they on print media?
Where are they?
And that's where you got to getin front of them at the right
(03:10):
moments and that's where I tryto help out with seo trying to
get you in front of the peopleat the right moment, organically
, without paying for those ads.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yes, um, one of my
like, I've had several people
you know, you know as someonewho is, you know, has taken
courses in seo and SEO and usedit and helped my clients get
found.
But they want to know the waythat they phrase.
It is like, okay, I want to putnow, now that I have my website
(03:35):
, I want to put SEO on it, and Itry to explain to them.
It's not like an additionalthing.
It's not like.
It's not like something thatyou add on top.
It's not like.
It's not like something thatthat you add on top.
It's not like this program thatyou just put on top of
everything else.
It's the keywords that you usein the content that you're
sharing.
So can you talk to me a littlebit about?
(03:56):
You know what those keywordsare and maybe if you have any
tools to help us?
You know, cause that's wherethe magic happens.
Right Is finding those keywordsand then using them.
So do you have any tools tohelp us?
You know, because that's wherethe magic happens, right Is
finding those keywords and thenusing them.
So do you have any tips forkeywords as far as SEO goes.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, no, there's
lots of ways to do keyword
research but, like you're saying, seo it's not something you
just do.
You have to build it up overtime because Google just doesn't
trust anybody and gettingGoogle to trust you does not
happen overnight.
There's no shortcut with that.
Paid ads will get you thatimmediate traction, but SEO to
get Google to trust you enoughto rank you takes time of you
(04:34):
just constantly showing them,sending them trust signals,
which is usually done throughthird-party sites mentioning you
, building backlinks.
But keywords are very importantbecause once Google trusts you,
then they're going to look atthose keywords and try to figure
out what keywords are youtargeting on your website.
And there's free and paid toolsthat could help with keyword
(04:54):
research.
There's a free tool from Googleand it's free and it's from
Google and we're trying to rankon Google and I would recommend
the Google Keyword Planner.
But you could pay for tools ifyou want to buy a tool such as
like Moz or Ahrefs or SEMrush orthere's so many paid tools out
there.
But the Google Keyword Planneris a great starting point where
(05:15):
you could put a keyword in thereor put a list of keywords and
it'll give you the search volumehow many people search for that
keyword every single month.
So you can figure out should Iuse a singular or plural or
synonym, because changing oneletter could have a big impact
on how many people search forthat keyword.
One of my clients they're apersonal injury law firm in Los
(05:38):
Angeles.
They want to rank for personalinjury lawyers, which gets, or a
personal injury lawyer, whichgets, 20,000 searches a month,
but the plural, personal injurylawyers gets 200,000 searches
every single month.
Just by changing one letterthey could get 10 times more
traffic.
And a lot of people skip overkeyword research because they
(05:59):
don't know what to do andthere's lots of tools out there.
Every platform is different.
If you're going to be onYouTube or Amazon or wherever
you're trying to rank, there'sdifferent tools out there.
But SEO is primarily for Googleand the Google cured plan is a
great starting point.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
That is.
That's an awesome tip.
Yeah, and, like you said, ifyou're looking to rank on Google
, you know what better place togo than you know Google and be
like hey, what are peoplesearching for?
One thing that I have told myclients to do in the past is use
the, the autofill feature onGoogle and start typing in you
(06:41):
know the keywords that they'relooking for and see what does
Google suggest.
Have you done that before inthe past?
Has that worked for you?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yep, when you search
on Google there's searches
related to at the bottom as well.
Also the autocomplete.
You can look at yourcompetitors.
The blue clickable link iscalled an SEO title tag and
that's where everyone else isputting keywords.
So you could quickly look atyour competitors and see if
everyone's using a singular andyou were thinking of using a
plural but everyone on page oneis using a singular version of
(07:11):
that keyword.
Then I'd probably go with thesingular version.
You could still double check itand I'd recommend double
checking everything with thekeyword planner or a tool to see
search volume.
But you quickly get an overviewof see what's going out there or
what the competition's doing,what other people are using, and
get ideas quickly and then seeif they make sense and if
they're good, incorporate theminto your strategy.
(07:32):
But if not, skip them over alot of them if they're not good.
Keywords from thatauto-complete.
Those are usually good blogpost topics because they might
not be mentioning a product orservice that you're offering,
but it's related to that and youcan lead people in and then try
to eventually, after they readthat blog post, let them know
and, by the way, I offer thisproduct or service.
(07:53):
It's not exactly what you'relooking for, but it's similar
and it might get them to thenwant to convert.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That's awesome, and I
was going to ask you can you if
you could give us some examplesof ways that we can incorporate
keywords?
And blog post is a great, youknow that's a great starting
point.
So can you give us a few otherexamples of where we can add our
keywords or where we can usethese keywords?
You know?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
like just in general
the content on your pages is the
most important place to put it.
Every single page needs to havetext and the more text you put
on each page, the happier Googleand search engines are going to
be in sprinkling those keywordsthroughout that content on each
page.
Depending on what page or whatkeywords you're targeting for
(08:37):
each page, they should alltarget different keywords.
That way you don't cannibalizeand become your own competitor.
But adding keywords to yourcontent doesn't require any
coding and that's one of themore important places to put it.
But if you want to get into thecoding title tags and meta
descriptions and header tags andschema and alt tags and making
(09:00):
sure all the coding places havethose keywords as well to help
just assign relevancy but ifyou're not tech savvy, just add
more text and that alone isgoing to make search engines
very, very happy.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yes, one of my
favorite places to tell my
clients to put your keywords.
You mentioned the alt tags,like in the image descriptions
and the image alt tags, becausepeople also use Google image
search and if your keywords arenot on the images, google
doesn't know to show that topeople, and so that's one of my
favorite little tidbits to add.
(09:33):
Do you have any other favoritespots that you like that people
tend to miss when it comes tokeywords that you like to let
them know?
This is a great area.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Also with the
backlinks.
So when you're buildingbacklinks on other people's
websites, if you can get theclickable, the text, the anchor
text it's called to be, toinclude keywords, that helps out
a lot.
So now Google sees anotherthird party site has your
targeted keywords with aclickable link that points to
your website and then you havethose keywords on your page.
(10:05):
That helps even more with therelevancy side of things.
You just don't want to overdothat, but if you get a couple
backlinks with your keywords inthat anchor text, that helps out
.
That's also very difficult toget and control what other
people do when they link out toyou.
But if you can influence thosebacklinks, that is very, very
helpful.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That is awesome, and
you did mention backlinks, and
backlinks are a big deal.
Like you said, it's kind oflike another website's giving
your website a nod Like this isa safe place to go.
Like I recommend this website,so can you give us some examples
of how we can build upbacklinks?
(10:46):
Yeah, in general, for ourwebsite.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I like to look at my
competition and see, just like
with the keywords.
Let's look at your competition.
Let's also look at yourcompetitors for their backlinks
and using tools you have to payfor them.
There's no free tools forbacklinks.
The more popular ones would beAhrefs or Moz or SEMrush.
They also do keyword research,which is nice.
(11:12):
A lot of these tools aremultiple tools all in one.
So if you buy one for thebacklinks, you're also going to
get keyword research and be ableto track your rankings to see
what position you're in monthover month and week over week.
And the backlinks are very, veryimportant because now we can
look at your competitors and seewho's on page one of Google for
your keywords.
Take those websites, put them inthese tools and look at the
(11:35):
backlinks and try to replicatethe ones that are relevant and
authoritative, because you don'twant to go after every backlink
.
It used to be a numbers game.
Now it's a quality overquantity with the backlinks, and
quality backlinks to Googlemean they're from sites that are
related to what you're doingand have some authority and
trust, and competitors aren'talways going to have the best
(11:55):
backlinks.
Sometimes they might have someweird ones or sketchy looking
ones, and if so, I would skip itover and just try to find the
ones that make sense, that looktrustworthy, look like they have
some relevancy, as long as it'ssomewhat related, like I'm an
SEO company.
I'm not going to get SEOcompanies to link out to me
because we're all competitors,but I could find other websites
(12:15):
about marketing, about business,about entrepreneurship, about
traditional marketing.
As long as it's somewhatrelated to me, that's what
Google wants to see.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yes, Is another way
of getting backlinks would that?
Would be like like what you'redoing now as a, as a guest
expert, your guest speaker on mypodcast.
So is that a more active way ofgetting backlinks?
(12:48):
Because, right like now, yourlinks are going to live on my
website because you're, you know, on my podcast, and so does
that count too?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yep.
So there's lots of ways tobuild backlinks and usually when
you're looking at yourcompetitors, you're going to see
that they might've startedblogging on a lot of people's
websites or press releases, orthey're doing interviews, or
they're being a guest onpeople's podcasts, or they're
sponsoring events and tradeshows or teaching classes and
(13:20):
whatever it is.
You can reverse, engineer andsee exactly what strategies your
competitors are using.
But in terms of getting newbacklinks, you're not going to
be able to get everything thatyour competitors are getting.
So then you have to startbuilding new ones and doing your
own outreach and kind of justgetting that and pushing that
needle and just reaching out toother websites that are related
to what you're doing and try tofigure out how can I get a
(13:40):
backlink?
Because if you just ask someonefor a backlink, they're probably
going to say no, because theyhave to go in, they have to
update their website.
They might not know how to dothat.
They might have to ask theirweb designer or webmaster, and
that's going to take time.
To ask their web designer orwebmaster, and that's going to
take time.
They're like why, what's in itfor me?
But if you offer something ofvalue, then they're going to be
(14:01):
a little bit more open to it.
So if you offer content orblogs or your time for being
interviewed or being a guest onpodcasts and they publish you on
their own website with a linkback to your your website, then
you're getting that backlink.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
That's perfect Cause.
When to the to, to the, to theregular person listening, maybe
they haven't started theirpodcast or they're just starting
their website we might betalking about things that
they're like Whoa, like abacklink.
That sounds like something elsethat I need.
Like I didn't even know Ineeded that, like how do I find
(14:37):
a backlink?
But the way that you justexplained it is beautiful
because it's so simple, right,like it's not, it's not this
random thing that we're justputting our website on some
other website.
It's when you're a guest, whenyou're a guest blogger, when you
provide graphics, when you area guest speaker, when you get PR
, when you do you know, summitsand you're a guest on a summit,
(14:59):
like all of those things.
As long as they're linking backto your website, those count as
backlinks.
So they're just regular links,but they lead back to your page
and so they have a fancy namecalled backlinks, and I remember
that was something that wasvery confusing to me.
I was like, well, what's thedifference between a regular
link and a backlink?
And I was like there is nodifference, except that it's
(15:21):
it's, you know, like fromwebsite to website.
And so, yeah, I love the wayyou explained it.
It was just very clear and veryeasy to understand.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
No, no, that is
trying to simplify things,
because I've been teachingclasses since 2013.
And my first classes were verycomplicated and confusing and I
realized simplify it all becauseSEO gets very technical, like
with the backlinks.
What I talked about isimportant, but that just kind of
scratches the surface on how tobuild the backlinks and how to
(15:51):
make sure you have the rightanchor text ratio and do you
follow and no follow on allthese technical things.
But the most important thing isjust try to just build good
quality backlinks.
Don't overthink it, don't worryabout all these little
technical nuances, but justfocus on is this site related to
what I'm doing?
If so, then I would try toreach out to them and build that
relationship and it's kind oflike digital PR, but really for
(16:15):
Google to see published on otherpeople's websites.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah, I love it.
And for those of you that arelistening, that you're authors,
that you're coaches, that you'reguest speakers, you probably
have a bunch of backlinks andyou might not even know it, just
with all the work that you do,because that's kind of what we
do every day.
And when you are building thesenew audiences, right, you're
borrowing audiences, just likeBrandon's borrowing my audience
(16:40):
right now, and he hascredibility with my audience,
because I said, hey, brandon's acool dude, I'm gonna have him
on my podcast, listen to what hehas to say.
And because we have arelationship, right, you, my
audience, the people listening,you're gonna be like I'm gonna
(17:01):
listen to what brandon has tosay, and it kind of works the
same way, but just with links,um, and so that's kind of cool
that it happens.
You know online and offline, um.
So can you tell us a little bitabout how you?
Um, how did you stumble in?
You mentioned it a little bit,but how did you stumble into SEO
?
Can you tell us a little bitabout that journey?
Because SEO is just, it's sounique and it is so technical
(17:27):
and so complicated.
So I feel like there's just agood story there, and are your
books hanging upside down?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I've got a floating
bookshelf because-.
That is pretty cool do a lot ofthe podcasts as a guest and the
background was kind of plainfor a while, so got some
bookshelves and got to give itsome color.
But yeah, it was too plainbefore and I'm writing a book
about being a guest on people'spodcasts and always talk about
(17:56):
the background and making sureit's good and looks nice and
looks professional and almostdone with that book and it's all
about the value of being aguest on other people's podcasts
and getting those backlinks andgetting social media content
and subject matter expertise andall these other things which
will be coming out soon allthese other things which will be
(18:18):
coming out soon.
But just fell into the world ofSEO back in 2007 after I got my
degree in business marketingand one of the first jobs I was
offered out of school was doingdigital marketing SEO and I
didn't really know much about it.
They didn't really teach youthat in school and I told the
company that I said don't worry,we're new to this as well and
we're going to learn with youand take you to different
workshops and seminars andclasses and did that for a few
(18:41):
months and just realized thateveryone is probably going to
have a website.
This is back in 2007.
And SEO is just a way to getfree traffic because back then I
was helping out with theirsocial media, doing some paid
ads, doing email marketing.
All that stuff works.
Seo is just free traffic.
And I thought who doesn't wantfree traffic?
(19:02):
And that's why I just decidedto stick with that, working at
different advertising agenciesas a director of SEO, and before
work and after work and on mylunch breaks I'd work on my own
company and eventually I wasable to build that up to be able
to quit my job and been doingthis ever since, just helping
people really tap into that freetraffic from Google.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Now that is amazing
and I love how the evolution of
technology because since 2007,you know like well, you know
like it's it's light years wherewe, where we are like we
couldn't have imagined havingthis conversation, you know,
face to face, like this backthen.
But now, in our age of AI,where everything is AI and you
(19:48):
did mention this, so I want, Iwant to come back to it Can you
talk to me about the importance?
Because you know some peopleare like SEO is dead because AI,
but we still need to use SEO inAI.
So can you tell me about alittle bit, about that pivot and
how you know it's still veryrelevant, even with AI out there
(20:08):
.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, as long as
people are searching somewhere,
then there's ways to try tooptimize and try to get that
visibility, whether it is onAmazon, even YouTube, yelp I'm
helping to rank you higher onthere, so it just depends where
you're searching.
And as long as people are stillsearching, then there's going to
be ways to optimize, puttingkeywords on your website to help
(20:32):
chat GPT or whoever's lookingat it read that code and better
understand what these pages areabout.
We'll have to figure out howthey start ranking their
algorithms.
All these new large languagemodels are going to be different
, whether it's perplexity orchat GPT and Gemini and Claude,
and just never ending new onesthat keep coming out.
(20:53):
So just trying to figure outwhat's going to happen Is
Google's going to take over andjust keep dominating, or chat
TPT going to take over, orwhat's going to happen and it's
kind of that unknown where, justtrying to figure out or just
trying to stay up to date withit all and just trying to make
sure that you're showneverywhere which in the past
that's always kind of the bestpractice is make sure you're
(21:14):
showing up on Google, but alsoBing and Yahoo and DuckDuckGo
and whatever other search enginepeople are using.
Now we've got to alsoaccommodate for the AI.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Do you have any tips
for people who do want to be
found through AI, like any quickSEO tips?
You know as far as gettingfound through AI, so like the AI
can suggest you when people aresearching for that usually
questions and are like sentencesversus just like keywords is
how people usually search ongoogle.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
but with voice search
and everything like that, it's
become more sentences.
And if you try to find out whatsentences or questions people
are commonly asking, you just goto google and search for your
keyword you'll also see asection that says people also
ask and these are all commonquestions that people frequently
ask related to that keywordthat if you could incorporate
(22:08):
those onto your website andanswer them, that will help you
get like voice search and Siriand Alexa and also AI.
It's a lot of that, alsoGoogle's feature snippet and the
AI overviews and all that isreally just having.
If you can find out whatquestions people commonly ask
and then answer it in your ownperspective in a few sentences
or a paragraph, then potentiallyyou'll start showing up in
(22:29):
there.
But lots of content has to behelpful content.
Ai could help write content,but then it's kind of like the
never ending cycle.
If it just rewrites contentthat's done with AI
hallucinations and makes it allup.
So just write for the readerand offer value and then
hopefully that will get allpicked up.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I love that and I
think that it's important to
note that.
What exactly what you said is,if it's all AI content that's
coming out, it will eventuallycannibalize itself and it's not
really going to make much senseanymore, and so it's very
fatalistic to be like, oh, ai istaking over, that's it, like
(23:08):
there's no more writing, becauseAI depends on our original
stories, our original research,our ideas to be able to
duplicate.
Right, because all it is is alarge language model, it uses
language.
So it's very important that westay at the forefront of writing
, of telling stories, ofrecording podcast episodes, you
(23:32):
know, because when the dustsettles, right, there's always a
technology and then it getsvery exciting and then it kind
of settles.
And you know, just the same waythat the washing machine was
introduced, there's a big hooplaand then, kind of like, now
there's washing machineseverywhere, right, and so I feel
like it's kind of like thatwith AI.
But I think it's very importantfor us to keep the humanity in
(23:54):
it and to keep writing, to keepsharing with each other, to keep
telling stories, and then SEOis how we can find each other,
how your audience can find you,and it's so powerful, like you
said, because you can start forfree.
Like you can use social mediato get found on Google, because
Google shows TikTok videos,google shows Reddit threads, you
(24:17):
know, and so when people search, even if you don't have a
website, you can still get found, no matter really what you're
using, as long as you arecreating content.
You have to be creating content, you know, and then using
keywords and all that otherstuff.
So, yeah, this has been sohelpful, so amazing.
Brandon, you mentioned that youhad a gift for the listeners,
(24:40):
so can you tell us a little bitabout that?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, so I create a
special gift for everybody.
If they go to my website atseoptimizerscom forward slash
gift.
They can find that there, alongwith my contact information and
classes I've done over theyears I've thrown up for free so
you could see step by step howto do a lot of stuff that we
talked about.
And also, if they want a freewebsite analysis, I'm happy to
(25:05):
check out the website from anSEO point of view and they can
book some time for free on mycalendar there as well.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Cool, and that link
will be down below, as well as a
bunch of his social media,right Like we were just talking
about.
I know that we're going to havedifferent ways that you can
follow, brandon, so check downbelow in the show notes for that
.
And now, before we sign off,final tip what's like?
That big SEO tip like the, youknow, the one that gives your
(25:33):
clients their biggest aha moment?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
the one that gives
your clients their biggest aha
moment.
Usually it's.
The patience side of thingswith SEO is sticking with it and
not just getting discouragedafter a few months if you're not
seeing traction, because itdoes take time.
Seo is not immediate and,depending on the competition of
those keywords, they could takesix months or longer sometimes,
or shorter too, if you have lowcompetition keywords.
But sticking with it and justlooking for those little
(26:00):
incremental growths, that's whatSEO is all about.
Sometimes they'll just go viraland just shoot up, but in
general just want to seeyourself moving up, looking at
google analytics or googlesearch console to track your
progress.
But stick with it and keepworking with it, and google is
going to keep rewarding you overtime with more traffic.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yes, absolutely.
And all of this works on Google, on Pinterest, on YouTube, on
all the social medias, anywherewhere somebody is searching
TikTok, chat, gpt, doesn'tmatter.
Listen to this episode again.
It is bare bones Like these arethe fundamentals.
So listen to this episode again.
It is bare bones Like these arethe fundamentals.
So listen to this episode again, take notes, because everything
(26:40):
Brandon's giving you isabsolute gold in this episode,
and be sure to go check out hisfree gifts and resources that
are available to help you getfound for free by your ideal
clients without having to payfor ads.
So yay, that is awesome.
Thank you so much, brandon.
This has been incredible, andthank you guys for joining us.
We will catch you guys on thenext episode of Overcome
(27:01):
Yourself, the podcast.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Thanks for having me
on.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Thank you.