eJENN SOLUTIONS PODCAST SEO for Business; Why it is important: Host: JENNIFER STINNETT, eJenn Solutions, Inc. Guest: CORY FREITAS Episode Summary: Our guest today is Cory Freitas, co-owner at DigiWei and he has worked with our host, Jennifer, for a few years now at eJenn solutions. They have had a conversation in the past also related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) In this episode, I sit with Cory, as he discusses in detail, Search Engine Optimization, shedding light on key principles that business and website owners must take advantage of to increase their productivity. Top Takeaways: "It's the business of making sure that Google understands exactly what your business is because if you leave it to them, it's just going to willy-nilly pick up words that may not be relevant" - [Jennifer Stinnett] "You have to be online right now... there are so many people that are stuck at home not just locally in the US but around the world, and those could be potential clients depending on what your business is" - [Cory Freitas] Episode Highlights: [00:10] Meet today's guest, Cory Freitas [02:22] What is SEO? [03:46] Why is SEO important? [14:40] Cory shares that clients can select parameters important for their SEO. [15:38] The pricing of SEO based on location. [19:24] About Keyword Research [20:00] What is the difference between SEO and SEM? [22:59] How does SEO help Digital Marketing? [24:44] Cory shares his services. [27:15] Final thoughts, the free "Google my business" platform Episode Notes: Following the pandemic, a lot of businesses are under pressure realizing the need to have an online presence. While businesses are now working on their websites, most of them lack the necessary SEO required for productivity. This is often because of the low awareness and understanding of SEO. SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It involves optimizing your website for search engines like Google, Bing, yahoo, and others. If you're ranking on Google you're most likely ranking on yahoo and Bing. Emphasizing the importance of SEO, Cory explains that it determines how Google finds you when people search for your site. The goal is to ensure that you rank for your keywords (i.e. particular words or phrases that your target market uses when searching for your site). You want to optimize your site for your specific service or product such that when people search for those things, your website comes up. If you don't optimize your website, then you're leaving it up to Google to determine what your website is about and Google might get it wrong, or not be as specific as you would prefer. Hiring a website developer may not necessarily guarantee proper Search Engine Optimization since their focus is primarily to develop the site, and you may not be able to predict the scope of their SEO services. WordPress has its branding on all its templates, so it is critical to update all the templates when building or redesigning your website. This enables Google to rank you for your content rather than the general WordPress brand. Optimizing your website by making such changes is called On-Page SEO. Cory also gets information about the competition and tries to improve on what they're doing. On-Page SEO also includes optimizing your website for certain locations by including keywords with that location on the website; this is particularly beneficial for local businesses. It is possible to optimize each page on your website differently for different entities. It's important to identify that if you're doing SEO for a local business as against a national business, the pricing would vary because of the difference in size between both projects. The SEO required for the national project would be more expensive and it may take longer to rank because the site would have to compete for keywords with more businesses offering the same service. Keyword Research is when we look for keywords to find some of the best keywords that we think will help your business rank quickly and get you the right traffic. Differentiating SEO from SEM, Cory explains that although sometimes used interchangeably, SEM is Search Engine Marketing and it refers to running google ads, or other marketing efforts directed at increasing awareness of your site's content. SEO is primarily focused on ensuring your site is optimized to be recognized by google. Backlinks, social media, domain are some of the small aspects that can be combined to improve SEO. SEO in Digital Marketing serves helps to bridge the gap in branding of a business between its website and social media presence. It helps immensely especially since this link makes it easy for Google and users to recognize the business as the same. Cory shares his services, including online marketing for small businesses, SEO, google ads management, website building, designing, and evaluation. Final thoughts: “You have to be online right now, so many people are stuck at home not just locally in the US but around the world, and those could be potential clients depending on what your business is”. It's better to be online than not. This period offers a great customer base for entertainers and content creators since many viewers are at home and spend more time online. A huge platform for local businesses to improve their SEO is "Google my business", a free tool that puts the business on google maps and when combined with the technical know-how available at eJenn Solutions makes a huge difference.
