#218: 5 Quick SEO Wins to Get You More Traffic
Today, SEO expert, Paula Rollo, returns to the The Blogger Genius Podcast to share 5 quick SEO wins to get you more traffic. What blogger doesn’t want more traffic?
Paula shares how you can find easy wins that can add up to serious traffic, if you know how to find them.
She also shares why you should be digging into Google Search Console instead of Google Analytics to guide you in your SEO journey, why you need to call yourself an expert, and the value of doing roundup posts… with your own content.
If you’re trying to grow your organic Google traffic faster, don’t miss this episode!
Table of Contents
Show Notes:
- MiloTree Easy Payments
- EMAIL CHALLENGE: Set Up a Paid Workshop in 5 Days!
- MiloTree Pop-Up App
- Paula Rollo SEO
- Paula’s SEO Workshop
- Blog Post Checklist
- Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
- All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes
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Intro 0:04Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I am Jillian Leslie, your host and I am so happy that you are here because you want to grow your online business.
I have a great episode today all about SEO with my favorite SEO expert and good friend Paula Rollo. And today we are going to talk about the five SEO wins to get you more traffic.
Honestly, Paula’s episodes are some of my most popular because she is so good at breaking down complicated or potentially intimidating SEO topics.
Now before we start, Paula is also going to be hosting a live workshop teaching SEO tips and I helped her set it up using our new payment platform MiloTree Easy Payments.
Now if you have something you want to teach to your community, I recommend you email me at jillian@milotree.com. And I will get on a call with you for free and help you set up your own paid workshop. It’s easier than you think.
I do not recommend you create a course. I recommend you create an easy paid workshop. So just email me at jillian@milotree.com. And I would love to help get you set up.
Now without further delay. Here is my jam-packed SEO podcast episode with Paula Rollo.
Paula, welcome back to the show.
Paula Rollo 1:51
Thank you for having me back. It’s always fun to be here.
Jillian Leslie 1:54
And it’s been too long. And what was so funny is I’m doing all of these exploratory calls talking to people who have memberships and talk because I want to learn for MiloTree Easy Payments, and I was on a call with Kristi Dosh.
She was talking about her membership. And she listens to the podcast. And she said that my SEO episodes with you Paula are her favorite episodes. And because of that I reached out to you and has been doing SEO work with you.
So, after I got off the call with her I texted you and I go, “Are your ears burning, because we were just talking about how much we love you and how smart you are and how good at SEO you are.”
Paula Rollo 2:37
That’s so so sweet. We’ve had so much fun doing SEO and I’ve learned so much from her business, like it’s not a zone that I’m normally in. So it’s been fascinating to work with her and just so much fun. I love it.
Jillian Leslie 2:49
So, I call you the SEO expert who works with female content creators.
Paula Rollo 2:56
That’s me.
Jillian Leslie 2:57
And I think because you’re so warm and supportive and not judgy and not bro-y that I feel like your language as a female content creator is easy to digest.
Paula Rollo 3:11
I see where you’re coming from with that. Because I think sometimes it’s easy to view SEO as something cold and harsh.
Jillian Leslie 3:21
And numbers and data.
Paula Rollo 3:25
It’s those things, which is fun. But like as female entrepreneurs you write and you work oftentimes with your heart, and that’s where the value is. And we can’t divorce that from SEO, those two things have to go hand in hand.
Jillian Leslie 3:39
And so, I was saying that for us creating MiloTree Easy Payments, we are the female content creator platform to get paid. And you and I were talking about that. It’s really nice when we know who our audience is and we know how to serve them.
And we’re going to talk about this at the end. But you’re going to be doing a workshop after this to teach people like a quick win workshop.
A one hour Zoom call, where you’re going to go deeper into what we’re talking about today. Which are 5 quick SEO wins to get you more traffic.
Paula Rollo 4:20
Totally, because I think what I hear in Facebook groups all the time is people going I know I need to get on SEO but it’s so overwhelming. I know I need to do more with SEO but it’s just daunting. It doesn’t have to be it’s fun.
And there’s so many easy, quick ways to get the traffic that encourage you to keep going and then get really like nerdy with it. I’m just excited.
Jillian Leslie 4:43
And the one thing too we before we pressed record we went through like what are the five things that we’re going to talk about and they’re not numbersy, they’re not. They’re really how to think about your content more strategically.
Paula Rollo 4:55
One hundred percent.
SEO Tip 1: Stop Ignoring the Small Wins
Jillian Leslie 4:58
So the first tip that you told me we should talk about is stop ignoring your small wins. And what does that mean?
Paula Rollo 5:14
This really means I think that a lot of the time we go after the biggest thing possible. And we are the ultimate guide to “X” in one blog post.
Jillian Leslie 5:28
Give me an example.
Paula Rollo 5:31
Give me a topic.
Jillian Leslie 5:33
Let’s do baby sleeping.
Paula Rollo 5:38
Okay, sure. So the ultimate guide to getting babies to sleep. And we think that we need to be in one blog post, how to get your baby to sleep 10 ways?
And every possible thing about baby sleeping, because you know what, if I type in baby sleep, I can use my SEO tools and see a million people search that a month. I haven’t looked it up. But I’m sure it’s a lot.
And I want to win that. And so that makes sense. So let me write that. And the reality is, you would be much better served by going after one little bitty thing, like how to get a baby to sleep when he’s teething. And maybe 250 people a month search for that.
But there’s going to be a lot fewer articles, and winning a keyword that is 250 people a month search for that, and you can be at the top and you can fully answer that one simple. How do I get my baby to sleep when he’s teething?
You’re going to get 250 clicks a month for that. And that’s much more valuable than not winning a term that is a million a month, even though it’s a great big term. We all want to go after that.
We all want to be the ultimate guide, but maybe start first with how do I answer this one little tiny thing really, really, really, really well.
And once I tell you how to do it with a teething baby, then maybe next month, you know how to get your baby to sleep when he took too long of a nap in the car today. And cover that and then cover another little tiny thing.
Jillian Leslie 7:20
So how to get your baby to sleep when you’re traveling?
Paula Rollo 7:24
Yes, that’s a huge one. Or when their brother won’t sleep, there’re so many ways. And instead of having one post, let’s say even you did when the baby sleep term with this long post.
If I’m a tired mom, I don’t want to read through 15 different headings that are not applicable to my situation to get to the one that was applicable.
And so you’re creating an overwhelm and not even serving your reader well, by always approaching it from this ultimate guide perspective. There’s a time and place for ultimate guides and we’ll get there.
But I think that a lot of bloggers get stuck kind of in a rut of not seeing anything from Google because they go, “The most thorough thing on baby sleep that there could possibly be.”
And that’s nice, but you’re really not helping these small individual people who are just like, “My baby is teething, what do I do?”
SEO Tip 2: You Can Win Big SEO Keywords
Jillian Leslie 8:17
Okay, this leads into number two, which is how to win big, which means for the bigger keyword, so let’s go back to baby sleeping.
I’ve written now five posts on different situations to get my baby to sleep. And now how do I think about I now want to start going after bigger keywords?
Paula Rollo 8:45
Totally. So I have in my intake form, before I work with anyone, you have to fill out a pretty lengthy form. And I’m giving you a sneak peek of what’s in there.
Because one of the things that’s in there is what are your wildest dreams keywords that you want to rank for? And that is there not because in the two weeks that we work together, you’re going to reach your wildest dreams, keywords.
That’s not going to happen. Those aren’t two weeks keywords, those are the baby sleep keywords that it’s like, this is a million a month. You’re going to have to work on this for a year to get there.
But I want to make sure that the things that we’re doing now are heading us in that direction.
Jillian Leslie 9:26
Is it possible to get there? Is it possible?
Paula Rollo 9:28
It is possible. It is absolutely possible if the intention is correct. Sometimes people want to rank for something like best News site. You’re not going to do that. You’re not Fox/CNN. So you’re not going to rank for best News site.
The search intention is not going to be you when you type in best News site. Sometimes people want to rank for something—.
Jillian Leslie 9:57
It’s like a product that they could buy at Target.
Paula Rollo 9:59
It’s a product. Yeah, Tide, you’re not going to rank for Tide. You’re not going to rank for Tide Pods. So, as long as it’s within the realm of I’m actually this not just I want to be this but I can actually answer this better. You know what I’m really great at sleep.
And I could answer baby sleep better than anybody else. But I have to spend the time and do the leg work to communicate to Google that yeah, wouldn’t baby sleep, that’s me. I’m babysleep.com.
Jillian Leslie 10:26
So what does it look like? Okay, baby sleep. I’ve done five blog posts on different aspects of baby sleep, best music, TV, travel, whatever it is. Best swaddle, room temperature, all that.
Paula Rollo 10:41
Every possible angle.
Jillian Leslie 10:44
How do I start thinking about the journey? Am I going to write that tentpole blog post that cornerstone content where these are all the spokes and I need that centerpiece to connect everything like what am I working toward?
Paula Rollo 11:02
You are working towards eventually making that piece. And that piece is more of a guide to finding the content on your site, then it is everything you could possibly 25 blog posts in one.
Jillian Leslie 11:20
It’s more like a directory.
Paula Rollo 11:22
One quick tip about traveling, but you can see the ultimate guide to sleep while traveling over here.
Jillian Leslie 11:30
Got it.
Paula Rollo 11:31
It’s more in that lane than it is. I’ve now combined all 20 of these posts into one 10,000 word blog post, which is what we all tried to do there for a few years. It’s not what searchers want.
Jillian Leslie 11:49
Can you explain that?
Paula Rollo 11:51
You can tell what a searcher wants for a keyword because I use phrases like search intent. And that seems like oh, scary. How could I ever know what search intent is? It’s actually really easy. SEOs just use big words to sound cool. It’s really easy.
Go to incognito. And go to Google and type in the phrase.
Jillian Leslie 12:14
An incognito window is one that doesn’t have cookies, it doesn’t have your tracking. Therefore, if you don’t know how to do it with your own browser, Google Chrome, incognito window or Firefox incognito window, you’ll see how to open this window.
So it’s kind of like a pure window.
Paula Rollo 12:33
It’s very easy, because search results can be customized to the user. So you don’t want to bias your cookies and stuff like that. So you would just go into an incognito window, type in baby sleep and see what comes up.
If it’s products, then that means Google knows, hey, when people type in baby sleep, they go buy things. And that’s why there’s the Amazon carousel at the top and the Target carousel below it. And things like that.
If it’s long form article content, then you know, hey, that’s what people want. So you can go and look at the top, I never do more than five, because more than five doesn’t matter. No one’s looking at those.
So the top five, look at the types of content that they are. And you can feel confident that Google knows when people search these specific words or this specific phrase, this is what they’re looking for. And that’s how you know that’s what you need to create.
And just because you could answer baby sleep in a longer format, and with more details and all of the historical data about how babies have slept since the beginning of time.
If that’s not what people want, when they type that into Google, that’s not what you should write.
Jillian Leslie 13:44
And so here’s the thing that I say, get out of your own bubble, you think in your mind, oh, what I will do is I’m going to go create the best longest most complete post on this.
But I say go search it, go look at who’s ranking, see what they’re doing, and be inspired by that. So if it’s a long post, okay, you’re going to be writing. If the top three posts are long posts, chances are you’re going to be writing a long post.
If it’s short posts, chances are you’re going to be writing short posts. If they let say, have ugly photos, great. There’s an opportunity putting good photos. If there’s no video and you like making video, make a video.
If you can make bulleted lists make it easier because you’re that crazy mom who hasn’t had sleep in two months like that mom doesn’t really want to read a whole thesis on this. They just want quick tips.
So just be thinking about the person searching and what state of mind they’re in. But also look around at what is doing well and chances are it’s doing well for a reason and be inspired by it but also try to up the game if you can.
Paula Rollo 14:56
Absolutely because your instinct will be right a lot of the time, but sometimes it can be really, really off. There’s been some keywords that, I was like, hey, this needs to be done really, really thorough.
This post is almost ranking at the top, let me go in. And let me add more fluff to it to make it bigger and better than everybody else. And I actually lost rank, because people wanted the quick and easy answer.
And I was making them read through the historical information about how much I knew on the topic, before I gave them the quick, easy win answer that they needed and that they were googling for.
And so, they didn’t even scroll down to get to my answer that was better than everybody else’s answer, because I wasn’t actually serving them the best way by adding in all of that.
So it’s a delicate balance, and sometimes your instincts can be off. So, it’s good to just evaluate and go, “Hey, who’s winning now? And how can I be a little bit better?”
Jillian Leslie 15:51
Yep. Okay.
Paula Rollo 15:53
Not super, super different, but better.
SEO Tip 3: Get Out of Google Analytics
Jillian Leslie 15:55
That’s good. Let’s go to number three. I thought this was an interesting thing you said. This is the top three tips. Get out of Google Analytics. What?
Paula Rollo 16:06
Yeah, yeah. And I’m a fan of Google Analytics. I’m not telling you Google Analytics is bad. But your biggest traffic wins are not in Google Analytics.
Jillian Leslie 16:16
Meaning going through my Google Analytics and seeing what has done well for me.
Paula Rollo 16:21
Yes, so the reason that your big wins aren’t there is because Google Analytics is telling you your past. And Google Search Console, which is what I love to use, when I’m looking for quick wins, Google Search Console will tell you your future.
So, here’s the thing. In Google Analytics, if I go in, and I go, “Oh, my gosh, my how to get a baby to sleep is doing great. Let me let me update it, let me improve it.”
Well, if I’m already winning in Google, for how to get my baby to sleep, I can’t win any harder than position one. So, I can make that post better. And there’s nothing wrong with making the post better.
But it’s not going to give me more traffic than it’s already giving me because I’m already winning. And so if I’m only looking at what’s already winning, I can’t win it more. I can’t make more people search how to get your baby to sleep.
Only however, many of 250 are going to search that and I’m going to get those 250 clicks. And that’s amazing. And that’s awesome. And I want to, but it’s not going to tell me, “Hey, this post, which got zero clicks could have also been getting 250 clicks.”
And that’s what Google Search Console will tell you.
Jillian Leslie 17:32
Okay, so if you have a blog, hopefully you have Google Analytics installed. And if you do not have Google Search Console installed, please pause this right now and go google how to install Google Analytics and get it installed in Google.
I always think of it this way. But I like your new way of thinking about it. Google Analytics is how people see your site. And Google Search Console is how Google sees your site.
Paula Rollo 18:01
Yeah, that’s fair.
Jillian Leslie 18:03
Okay. So now we have two new ways of thinking about it. Therefore though, Google Analytics is saying this many people clicked on this blog post, and they came to my site.
But Google Analytics is telling you, what are the key words, Google is serving up with your content that people are searching for these keywords, and it’s driving to your content.
Paula Rollo 18:27
That’s exactly right. And it tells you where you are on the page most of the time. Are you in position one? Are you in position 100? The sweet spot is to look for the quickest wins, or to look for the three to five’s.
Because if you’re in position five, you’re not going to see that post in Google Analytics. Because who Google something and scrolls down to the middle of the page of Google and clicks? Nobody.
You’re going to look at the first three. And if Google didn’t get your search intent, using that same phrase, again, because it’s not scary. It’s easy. It’s just what you wanted to search for.
If Google did not understand your intention for that search in the first three things, you scroll back up to the top and you type something else in, and we all do it. So if you’re on position five, you’re not going to see that in Google Analytics.
However, Google Search Console will tell you, hey, you’re in position five. And if you do some tweaks, and if you just move up to two spaces to position three, suddenly you will see that in Google Analytics and you will get that traffic.
Jillian Leslie 19:30
Oh. So your solution or your strategy for the quick win to get traffic is go into search console, look for where you are doing well, but not terrifically well, look for where you are on the first page, but in say position three to five.
Aren’t there 10 still on the first page of Google?
Paula Rollo 19:53
Yeah, around 10 is the first page.
Jillian Leslie 19:55
So, if you’re position nine, like you can do some work. So would you say this, I see I’m in position three through nine. Those are the ones I want to work on.
I open an incognito window, I go search for that keyword, I see what comes up, I see what my competitors are doing, especially number one and number two. And I think to myself, “How can I improve my posts to be those posts?”
Paula Rollo 20:23
Yes, that would be a great first step.
Jillian Leslie 20:26
What are the quickest things I could do in that post to get it up?
Paula Rollo 20:32
So there’s another thing that looks intimidating in Google Search Console, that’s not. And up at the top, when you’re doing this, you’ll see a thing that says CTR, you want to make sure that’s clicked.
And it will give you a percentage ranking for each of the search terms. It’s a little column. And it is labeled CTR, and it gives you a percent. And what that is, it’s just click- through rate.
And that’s Google’s doing the complicated math for you. That’s why it’s one of those things that looks scary and it’s really not. Google is doing the math for you of how many people saw your results in Google, they saw you. And they chose to click.
So if you see that CTR, and it’s very, very low.
Jillian Leslie 21:16
What is low? Give me what is low.
Paula Rollo 21:18
Low is very dependent on what position you’re in.
Jillian Leslie 21:22
Okay.
Paula Rollo 21:24
If you’re in position one, you want that to be a 50% or higher.
Jillian Leslie 21:28
Got it.
Paula Rollo 21:28
If you’re in position two, or three, 20% would be good. Because you’re competing, you’re seeing without scrolling. If you’re in position three, your result will be seen without the person having to scroll, but more than likely, they’re going to click the number one.
Jillian Leslie 21:44
Got it.
Paula Rollo 21:45
Like 20%, for position three is good. But if it’s in the single digits, that’s like alarm, something is wrong. And that’s when you go in and you go, let me look at the result how it’s showing in Google just like you said.
And then you can go in and change your meta description, update the SEO title in Yoast, if you’re using Yoast, I hope you’re using Yoast. Most of you, I’m sure are using the Yoast plugin, but you go into that.
Jillian Leslie 22:11
And by the way, there’s a free version, start there.
Paula Rollo 22:14
There’s a free version totally start there. And you edit your meta description, but look at those top three results and say, what’s more interesting about their description than mine? What’s more interesting about their SEO title than mine?
Because what’s also great is you can leave your title of the blog post the exact same as it is, but change around the Yoast title. It’s at the very bottom of the post. And that’s what’s going to appear in the search results is the Yoast title.
So, it needs to include your keyword, but you can make it a bit more click baity, or add something like best for 2022 there. I would never put a year in the blog post title itself. But I would in the Yoast title, I have a note to do it next year to update it.
Jillian Leslie 23:05
I love that. That is a great tip.
Paula Rollo 23:07
Play there. Because sometimes you can even be ranking number one or two, but your click-through rate is 3%. And that means something is wrong with your meta description and title and something in there.
Jillian Leslie 23:19
It’s a thing. You spend an hour, two hours writing a newsletter. But if nobody clicks on the headline, who cares. And it’s the same, you have to be putting catchy terms in there to get people to open your email. Same thing with your blog post.
Paula Rollo 23:40
Absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 23:42
That’s like your marketing. That’s your quick, quick grab, you want to grab somebody’s attention.
Paula Rollo 23:50
It is. When you update that meta description and stuff, I don’t want you to be alarmed that if you go Google immediately, it’s not going to update in Google immediately, you have to wait for Google to recrawl it.
And that can take anywhere from a couple days to a couple of weeks depending on your site. So don’t stress out about that, like, “Oh, the click-through rate hasn’t improved the next day. So I need to edit it again.” Give it some time.
Think about it strategically make a good change. And then give it a couple of weeks and see if your click-through rate improves and things like that. Because you have to give Google some time to look at everything again and put you in the right spot.
Jillian Leslie 24:26
What I hear you saying is content creators love creating content and love helping people. And that’s a big part of it because that shows in your post. I really love this I love cooking or I love crafting and it means something to me.
And I think that we as female creators are so good at that. And what I think you’re saying is there’s then a kind of marketing layer on top which is not icky. It is, “I want my love.”
Like this post I put so much of my love and my soul into this post. And I want to touch other people with the content that I’m creating, with the solutions that I know whether it be a quick recipe or getting my baby to sleep.
But in order to get people to find me, I can’t be hiding, or I can’t be thinking they’ll find me if it’s good enough, no, this is where you learn to reach out, figure out how to optimize that layer on top of it, so that people find you.
So the people then discover and then once they click, and they see your soul, and they see your heart, and they see how much you want to help. Then they go, “Oh, my God.” Then they’re on your page longer.
They’re reading through, they’re clicking around, and all of that information, goes back to Google, and says, hey, here’s some really solid content. This is a really great blogger, content creator, so we can start to trust you. But you have to put that added attention.
How does that sounds?
Paula Rollo 26:05
It feels intimidating to add, how do I make SEO optimized, keyword rich, meta description that seems like, ugh, ick right? Pour your heart and soul into the meta description, how you would want to communicate it to the reader.
Get it how you like it, and then go back and figure out where you can put your keyword in. You can kind of reverse it that way, if you’re a very heart heavy writer, which is awesome.
Let that come through. Because then the person knows what to expect when they get to your blog post. That expectation has already been set in the Google search results of like, “Oh, this woman gets me. This is amazing.”
And then you add in the bit that’s needed for the robot, which is the actual keyword.
Jillian Leslie 26:51
I love that.
Paula Rollo 26:51
So you can approach it however you think about it best. But don’t be afraid to add in the things for the robots, after you’ve written your heart out for your meta.
SEO Tip 4: Call Yourself an Expert
Jillian Leslie 27:01
I love that. I love that. I love that. Alright, number four, ready? Calling yourself an expert?
Paula Rollo 27:11
Yes, yes.
Jillian Leslie 27:13
Again, as content creators. We go, I’m working with all these people, helping them set up like a paid workshop. And I start with what are you an expert in? And I get like this look of terror.
Because what do you mean, I’m an expert in something. And I say expert small ‘e”. And I also say where are you just one step ahead of your audience? And then their shoulders come down.
And they can take a breath while Google wants you to tell them I’m an expert. Hey, I’m pretty cool like, I’m an expert. So will you talk to me about that from Google’s perspective?
Paula Rollo 27:51
Yeah, so from Google’s perspective, they want to send people to high quality results on an individual level and on a site wide level. And that’s where you hear again, scary SEO terms that aren’t bounce rate, things like that.
Google is paying attention to if somebody clicked through these results, how long did they stay on the page? Did they stay and consume the content? Then that’s a good quality signal to Google. And that’s great.
Did they go to another page on the site? That’s a good quality signal to Google. There’s nowhere else for the person to go if there’s not enough there for them to read. There are just little signals like that. Each one alone is not going to make or break your site.
But altogether, it can make you seem much more high quality to Google, if you are doing things like keeping people on the page, because they’re reading and getting them to click through to a second page.
Google is like, whoa, super high quality. This person is an expert in baby sleep, because not only did they read the baby sleep while teething, they then clicked over and read best products for teething babies.
And then they took another action. Google knows all of that stuff. It’s creepy. They’re tracking them, but they do, they know. So having enough there that the robots can tell through human behavior, that you’re an expert, is what you’re trying to do.
This is not like a gimmicky trick Google. You’re not tricking Google into anything. Google is monitoring what the humans are doing. So, if the humans are viewing you as a quality site with quality content, Google is going to go oh, this person is an expert.
They have quality content that the humans are liking because all that the robots are trying to do is make the humans happy.
Jillian Leslie 29:36
So what I would say is, even when I say what are you an expert in and you feel like a poser, like your imposter syndrome alarm just starts going off. I’m going to say fake it till you make it.
Meaning in your writing in everything you’re putting out there. You present yourself as an expert. Again, you only have to be one step ahead. I’m not saying go lie, that you’ve got a PhD. Or that you’ve got all these credentials.
It’s not that it’s about presenting this content in a way that people go, “Oh, yeah, I should follow you. Oh, yeah, I should listen to you.” And especially if you’ve got strategies to get your babies to sleep, and they work.
Paula Rollo 30:24
Yeah. And it really can just be in your tone. It’s saying, this got my baby to sleep nine times out of 10 instead of this work for my baby, but I don’t know, maybe something else will work for your baby. Different things work for different people.
That’s not fun to read. Even though it’s accurate, you’d never said, you’re a terrible mom, if this doesn’t work for you. And no one’s going to read that into what you’re saying. But you just say this works 9 times out of 10 for me, and I hope it does for you too.
Jillian Leslie 30:52
Absolutely. And I’m going to talk about it. And I’m going to tell you what kind of essential oils, you’re going to kind of paint the picture. But this is such an important thing.
And again, I’ve seen this now so many times, lean in to your expertise, lean into it, because chances are you do know something. And, again, don’t lie, but fake it till you make it.
I was talking to another mom, another middle-aged mom. We’re saying that thing like all of a sudden you reach 35 or 40. And somebody anoints you as something. Like, you become the best expert on X. No.
It’s like, you’re saying, “Hey, I have all this experience. Maybe I am pretty good at this.” It’s like you’ve got to walk through the door, like nobody is opening the door. And like leading you in, you find the door, you open it and you walk through it.
Paula Rollo 31:53
Yeah. And I think that one of the reasons, SEO resonates with me personally, and maybe this will help other people too, is that in person I’m very shy and awkward. I mean, I am.
I have this like internal dialogue that’s unhealthy. And I recognize that it is, but I’m like, “Maybe they don’t want to actually hear my opinion. And maybe what Jill has to say is way more interesting than what I have to say. And so I’m just going to be quiet.”
But if someone types something into Google, and especially with parenting, you don’t want to be the person who’s shoving your parenting advice down someone else’s throat, it’s like all of the memes are made about that. And no, in person.
But if someone is typing into Google, How do I do this?” They want your opinion, this is not the same as walking up to a mom at the playground and being like, “I hear your baby crying. Let me tell you what you should do.”
That’s the mom sitting at the playground, frantically Googling, “How do I make the baby stop crying?” And you’re helping her she’s asked you for advice. And she’s already there because she wants to hear your advice.
So it’s different than you inserting yourself. If someone asked you a question, answer the question and don’t dis-value or discredit what you have to say, when someone asked you and sought out your advice. So there is a little bit of a difference there.
And if you can get into that mindset of somebody asked me, that’s a lot easier to step into. I can have an SEO conversation with you all day but if we were at a table of five or six people and people were talking SEO, I probably wouldn’t speak up because of my personality.
But people are on the podcast and they’re listening because they wanted to hear what I had to say. So I have no problem giving my advice and my thoughts on all of the things because you just you opted in to listen to my voice this morning.
But if we were at brunch with 10 different people, I’d be like, hmm, I’ll let somebody else share because I don’t want to overstep.
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Do Roundup Posts With Your Own Content
Jillian Leslie 34:27
Now let’s talk about roundup posts because this speaks to experts to being an expert. So talk about what a roundup post is and how people did them in the past and your recommendation for doing them today.
Paula Rollo 34:42
Yes, so in the past it was like 100 ways to “X”, 100 Easter crafts for kids. All of the things. And that’s fine. There’s time and a place for those still today and in certain niches it’s more valuable than others.
Jillian Leslie 35:01
Wait. When you were doing the 100 Easter crafts, you were going out into the internet, going to other people’s blogs, saying, “Hey, can I link to your post? Can I take a photo and add it to my blog.”
So that your blog would be this compilation of content, but most of it wasn’t your content.
Paula Rollo 35:22
Most of it, it’s not all. I literally used to do round ups where I did not have a single listing in my own round up. Because I was like, oh, sensory boxes are popular, I don’t have any sensory boxes, I’ll make a round up of other people’s sensory boxes.
And those never did well for me, because shocker, I was not in authority, sensory boxes, but they can do well on social. And that’s why I say there’s a time and a place. And I’m not saying never make that type of content.
If it’s working well for you lean in, that’s fine. But what gets ignored a lot of the time is the top five things and you just share five from your own site, ideas for “X”. And it’s your five ideas, because again, you’re the expert, not everybody else is the expert.
It’s keeping people on your site, it’s getting your bounce rate to be how Google likes it, because people are on one post on your site, and then they go to another and then they go to another.
There’s a lot of technical value in those, there’s a lot of building trust with your reader value in those. And the other downfall of linking out to other people, which I never say never, I’m not saying never link to someone else.
But the issue with doing that is that if you have all of these posts that are linking to other people, if those people sell their blog, if they quit blogging, you’re then ending up with a lot of 404s on your site.
Jillian Leslie 36:36
Too many links.
Paula Rollo 36:48
Which is where like somebody clicks a button, and they go nowhere. And Google hates that. And the robots know that happens. And users know that happens.
And it’s frustrating, it doesn’t serve your reader well, and it doesn’t serve the robots well. And that’s not something that you want to do.
So if you are making those that link out to a lot of other people, it’s important to monitor them, and make sure that you remove any dead links.
Often, I remove dead links from sites twice a year, because I’m very vigilant about that. But that’s something that you have to stay on top of. But you don’t if it’s your content, because you know that your content is going to be good forever.
Jillian Leslie 37:25
So, that’s kind of like this.
Paula Rollo 37:26
So, there’s multiple reasons to do it.
Jillian Leslie 37:29
Okay, so let’s say I am a craft blogger and I’ve been blogging for five years, and over the years, I have a lot of Easter crafts, it would be taking those, let’s say I’ve got 10 Easter crafts, and creating a round up of my Easter crafts.
And maybe I’ve got some Easter recipes. And I can put those in. And it could be like, hey, here’s how to throw an Easter party, and I’ve got printables or whatever.
And so it’s about slicing and dicing your own content in ways that can be useful for somebody who, let’s say, is looking for Easter crafts, and I’ve got that round of just crafts, or I want to throw an Easter party.
And I’ve got food ideas and some activities, and now my crafts become party activities. So it’s like how to serve up your content, you’ve already written in new ways to solve problems for different kinds of people searching for solutions.
Paula Rollo 38:18
Yes. And this circles back to the small wins as well. Because it’s a lot harder to win Easter crafts as a KW.
Jillian Leslie 38:28
Keyword.
Paula Rollo 38:30
Yes, as a keyword, I’m sorry, somebody else is going to win that probably most likely, it’s not going to be you. But Easter crafts for a five year old is probably open. And you can step in with the five best Easter crafts for a five year old.
And like I said before, maybe 1,000 people search that during the whole month of Easter. But that’s 1,000 pageviews. First is I tried, and I ranked on page three for Easter crafts, which is a million.
And I didn’t get any pageviews from all of my work rounding up this content from 50 other bloggers and I had 101 ideas and they were all fine and they were all good.
But you could have leaned into the five year olds and then did another one for seven year olds, and then did another one for twins or whatever the case may be whatever fits with your content.
But there’s a lot of opportunity for smaller things where you could do the top five for a smaller niche idea and actually win the term.
SEO Tip 5: Clean Up Your Old Posts
Jillian Leslie 39:31
That is such good advice. Alright, number five, cleaning up your content. We had a big debate about this and you won. It seem so awful to me, but talk to me about cleaning up your content.
First of all, why would I want to do this? And the easiest ways I could clean up my content because I have been blogging for over 10 years.
Paula Rollo 39:58
Yes, so the 10 year old bloggers, and I’m in this category, we are the worst at having a lot of content that needs to be cleaned up. And a lot of what’s called thin content where there’s just not much to it.
When I cleaned this up on my own site, I used to do what was called a wordless Wednesday, as a blog post, I don’t know if you remember this, this was literally like 10, 15 years ago.
And what you would do for a blog post was like Wordless Wednesday, number, whatever, and you posted a photo. And that was the whole blog post. And when I tell you, some things are not adding value to your site.
That is what I’m talking about perfect example, or I used to do roundup parties, where you would go drop your link on the thing, and you would get up at midnight to go put your link in fast. It’s like the wild things we used to do.
Jillian Leslie 40:53
Wait, I would do a blog post that says this. “You were the 137th person to enter my giveaway. You won!”
Paula Rollo 41:04
Perfect example. Perfect example. So I’m not talking about necessarily like the journaling, heartfelt things that you wrote 15 years ago that needs to be treated differently.
But like the things that you can go, you know what, the internet does not need this, and it needs to go. Delete it.
Jillian Leslie 41:22
Okay, so you would say, delete those?
Paula Rollo 41:24
If you’re using Yoast, you can submit it in Yoast redirects, submit a 410 to Google. It’s one of those things that sounds scary. And it’s literally two clicks. If you’re using Yoast, you can go to their site and get a tutorial for it.
It’s so easy, I promise, you have to be on Yoast Premium to do it. And all that does is tell Google immediately that you deleted it, which will kind of flush it out of Google’s system faster.
But listen, if it’s a wordless Wednesday post, it’s not being ranked in Google for anything, you don’t need to worry about it. If it’s the 137th winner, you don’t need to worry about it. Delete it.
Jillian Leslie 41:58
One thing you said that make sense to me is, you’ve got all this chuffer on your blog. And you really want Google to look at you as an expert. So therefore, if I’ve got 1,000, blog posts, and let’s say 700 are chuffer, that don’t make sense, or whatever.
Google is looking at this as an entirety of 1,000 posts, and therefore, they’re only seeing those top posts that are really good. But it’s like you’re carrying all this dead weight. Therefore, it makes sense to either unindex. Is that right?
Paula Rollo 42:32
Deindex.
Jillian Leslie 42:32
Where you’re telling Google don’t look at it, don’t think about this post as part of my blog. It’s almost like ignore it, or delete it.
Paula Rollo 42:44
Yeah. And I, I’m very cautious about this, because I’m a paranoid person. And so, I have like a whole steps that I go through when it’s a longer form piece of content that I’m like, I really don’t think that this is adding value.
And I go double check that it hasn’t gotten traffic, and I go, look in Google Search Console and make sure that it’s not ranking for anything that would surprise me. And that’s for pieces of content that are like, I wrote this about baby sleep.
But it wasn’t that helpful. It was more of a rant of my baby’s not sleeping, right, then it was a helpful piece of content that I would like to present to the world in 2022. But I will still go double check if it’s on topic, but just unhelpful.
I will go check and see if it’s getting traffic, or if it’s ranking for something, then I may need to go in and update that and give it a facelift and write it how I would have written it in 2022.
To just make it a helpful piece of content, instead of outright deleting it. And I kind of take it by a case-by-case basis on those things.
Jillian Leslie 43:45
So, let’s say I just wanted to delete my Wordless Wednesday posts, and my yeah, you won the raffle, or you won the giveaway post, what’s the easiest way for me to find those posts and delete them and get rid of them?
Because otherwise, if I have to go through one by one by one, then search for them that’s a lot.
Paula Rollo 44:05
You could probably go into your categories or tags and look for things like if you used to categorize and tag things by like a giveaway. I had a tag for wordless Wednesday.
So that was very easy for me to go in and go to my WordPress dashboard from the backend to go to categories, find my wordless Wednesday, tag, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.
And I submitted them all as 410s, which was an extra step, but it makes the process faster as all it does. You’re not ruining anything if you don’t take the time to do that. So that would be one way.
I have also with certain sites, honestly just gone to sitename.com/blog. clicked to the very end just started. But you know what, it’s a little by little. It’s just, here’s one less thing that I’m telling Google.
This is what I’m about when I’m not. I’m not about wordless Wednesday, I’m not about complaining about whatever, because if you’ve been blogging 10 years, you should just complain.
It used to be like, let me vent on the internet, and I don’t really want that out there anymore. Let me just get rid of that real quick. And it’s just little by little one-by-one, for every post you published, let’s go take down two.
And over time, take down or update or whatever you need to do, over time that’s going to clean up your site and make it that much healthier for robots and for humans, because everything has to be robots and humans.
And the human side of this is if I go to your site, and I type in “baby sleep”, your good articles are going to come up and the brand that you wrote, when your baby wouldn’t sleep at two o’clock in the morning, when you’re a 22 year old new mom.
Both of those are going to come up when I use search bar on your site. But you want me to go to the good content.
And so that’s where either cleaning up, fixing or deleting is helping your humans as well as your Google robots, because humans are going to then be driven to your best topics as well.
Jillian Leslie 46:06
That is so helpful. Okay, to recap, these are the five tips, stop ignoring your small wins. Two, set yourself up for the big wins by having your content all make sense. Three, get out of Google Analytics, get into search console.
Four, call yourself an expert. And my little added advice is fake it till you make it. And five, clean up your content.
As Paula says, just little by little, you don’t have to do it all tomorrow, just to think in terms of how do I get rid of some dead weight and make all of my content make sense?
Paula Rollo 46:46
Exactly right.
Jillian Leslie 46:47
So let’s then talk about if people want to reach out to you or come to your upcoming workshops. So, if they want to come to your upcoming workshop an hour on Zoom, what are you going to be teaching?
Paula Rollo 47:03
I’m going to be really diving deep into how you can find these wins. We kind of did a Rooms iView today of these concepts and it’s big.
And I worry that a podcast like this kind of leave somebody feeling overwhelmed. Like, “Oh, that’s great. This makes sense conceptually, but how do I take step one?”
Jillian Leslie 47:26
What does it look like?
Paula Rollo 47:27
What does it look like? How do I do it in my content, though, because I know that everybody’s content is the exception. It really is. We all have something unique to our content that makes us awesome, and also something unique, that’s probably hurting us.
But how do you figure out what those things are and really do it in your content itself? And that’s what the workshop is going to be about is like how you can find those quick wins yourself.
Jillian Leslie 47:54
For yourself. For you.
Paula Rollo 47:57
Yeah, so that big heady concept it’s for me how do I dive in and do this personally?
Jillian Leslie 48:01
And you can find Paula’s workshop by going to seowins.milotreecart.com.
Paula, if somebody wants to reach out to you with a question or to work with you, because a bunch of people by the way, listen to these podcasts with you and then say I want to work with you.
So how can they then reach out to you with a question or for coaching? That kind of thing?
Paula Rollo 48:35
I made it really easy, because everything is in my name. So, if you have a specific question, paularollo@gmail.com.
Jillian Leslie 48:39
Paula Rollo.
Paula Rollo 48:40
R-O-L-L-O. And the same thing, my website is the same. So, if you want to look at the SEO package of how I work with content creators, paularollo.com. And you can just click SEO right at the top and see how it works, how we can work together.
Jillian Leslie 49:00
I love it. Paula, this is so fun. We are friends IRL. So it’s always really fun because we get to catch up. And you will of course be back doing this.
And I feel like again, your language speaks so well to female content creators who want to understand that SEO layer without being overwhelmed.
Paula Rollo 49:25
Yes, it should be fun and not scary. And if it feels scary, then just come talk to me and we can make it fun.
Jillian Leslie 49:32
I love that. Well, Paula, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Paula Rollo 49:38
Thank you for having me.
Jillian Leslie 49:44
I hope you guys got a lot of tips and new ideas in this episode. I know whenever I have Paula on I always learn something new, or she highlights something that I need to be paying attention to.
My biggest takeaway is always that SEO does make sense. If I can please Google, I ultimately please myself. And I think Paula is really good and explaining the logic behind how Google is seeing my content.
And then it helps me write my posts with that in mind. So two things. One, grab my blog post checklist by heading to milotree.com/blogpostchecklist.
And two, if you have something to teach, like Paula is teaching her SEO workshop, if you’ve got a workshop in you, I want to help pull it out. So, just email me at jillian@milotree.com and we will do just that.
And I will see you here again next week.
Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:
- Get More Traffic With These New SEO Tactics with Paula Rollo
- Smart SEO Strategies To Get You More Traffic with Casey Markee (Rebroadcast)
- How to Grow Your Traffic with the New Google Update with David Leslie
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