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What sets this podcast apart? We believe in the power of meaningful marketing—a holistic approach that prioritises authenticity, connection, and purpose, whilst still turning a profit.
Chantal Gerardy is an International Award Winning Marketing Strategist who empowers purpose-led businesses to revolutionise their online marketing approach and create a brand that resonates deeply with their online audience. If you're tired of cookie-cutter marketing advice, and seek strategies that truly make a difference, this podcast is for you.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. Today I have Katrina Puranik here from Ranking Australia, and we are gonna talk about SEO because a lot of times I see people on Facebook and Facebook groups on LinkedIn all talking about SEO. Do I need. EO is it worth something?
Is it something I should be investing in? Um, how do I manage my SEO on an ongoing basis? Can my virtual assistant do? SEO can chat, GBT, do SEO. So today, uh, Katrina is going to help, um, debunk and answer some of those questions for us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks Chantal. Happy to be here on the Meaningful Marketing Podcast.
Um. SEO, everyone comes to me and, you know, SEOI need SEO, but do they really actually understand what they're asking for? Um, SEO in a nutshell, basically, uh, it's marketing that you don't have to pay per click, right? So, um, we all want to be able to make as much money as we can without spending, um, you know, wa of, uh, or, or huge amounts of, um.
Money. So what we need to do essentially for SEO is to, you know, research what it is your clients actually want and need, and you need to come at it from that. Aspects. So what problems you solve, which, you know, um, so whether you are a service based business or a product, product based business, you would have a ton of research and obviously already industry based knowledge on what clients need and want and what makes your product or service stand out.
And that is where you start for your research. But it's all comes down to data because, um, so for example, what is it? Uh. Phrase, and I'm using this only because, um, we work a lot with health and wellness businesses, particularly with medical practitioners. So for example, uh, vestibular migraines, who's actually researching vestibular migraines.
Um, uh, this is for our clinical hypnosis, um, practitioner and. Well, yeah, there's a heap of, uh, search volume for that, but clients aren't searching necessarily. It's most likely the practitioners or students or, uh, they've heard about it and they wanna know what it is, but what are they looking for when they're looking for the service?
They're looking for the actual clinic. They're looking for the hypnotic, uh, sessions. The, or will hypnosis help me with my migraine? Or these sort of things. So what are all the. Branching out, uh, long tail key phrases, and I say key phrases, key words is a thing in the past because you cannot just target one word, two words.
It's a long tail key phrase. It's a sentence, it's a question. Um, people that thinks that. In the minds of your clients that you need to build into your strategy. And if you are clever about, uh, planning content around those needs, then and structuring your site as such, then you'll end up seeing that you'll have more visibility on Google more and you push that content out across your social channels for signals and such and reputation management.
You Google business profiles, all those sort of things, um, it's not just on your website. SEO is not on your website alone. It's a, it's a holistic strategy for organic marketing. So wherever you can place your content for relevant. Uh, visibility as well.
Yeah. Excellent. I mean, there's so much in there that's awesome.
And I always talk about effective communication and being able to effectively communicate to the clients what you do and how it can help them. But here's the thing, it's not about you using the language that you use. To explain that it's about using the language that they are using and that they are searching for, and it's about creating it and understanding it.
So I always say you've gotta become like a good a stalker, really stalk and get to know them because you've gotta understand the phrases that they're using, the words that they're using, where they're hanging out, the content that they're searching for. So you can truly. What I like to say, a two-sided conversation with someone online.
It's not you talking at your customers through your content, it's talking with them. It's a two-sided conversation and SEO's part of that, um, and what I love about this as well, is it's about two things here that we kind of talking about, and that is one. Having a strategy. So going in there and doing research, truly understanding who your ideal customer is coming up within with what that strategy is.
That content or SEO strategy is to create that content. But the second part is making sure that you've got the foundations right, that you're actually going in and setting things up, right? Because for example. If you don't set up your Facebook account, right, if you don't set up your Instagram account, right?
If you six years ago filled out your about section on Facebook, um, and you went, and this happens all the time, they go, oh, I'll get to that later. I'll come back and fill that in. And then they wonder why it's not working, because you actually haven't put the words into the platform. You haven't taken the time to actually set it up correctly and put the right words in there so that.
You can actually help the platform find your ideal clients and, and you can actually help the algorithm when we're talking about it. 'cause that's what it is. It's algorithms be able to find you because it's the words that you put in that help connect you with your ideal clients online and you don't have to pay for it when you set it up correctly.
So I love that strategy. Foundations really, really awesome for SEO. So let's talk about ads versus SEO because. With SEO, obviously you can. Um, firstly, I believe with SEO you've gotta first make sure you set up things correctly. You have that strategy, um, and then you're gonna maybe invest in, in getting ongoing SEO.
Um, and then there's stuff that you can manage yourself on an ongoing basis, and we'll talk a bit about that later. But let's talk about ads versus SEO because what I like to say is, is that if it's not working organically, it's not gonna work with ads. That's correct.
Uh, a hundred percent Chantal, um, with SEO.
Versus ads. Um, it's, it's never, uh, it's not a battle between them. It needs to be a glorious handshake. It's a, it's a really intimate relationship between SEO and Google ads, and you are going to spend a lot. You're gonna get a much better return on your investment or return on ad spend if your SEO is optimized completely, uh, in the green, if you like, if you are using WordPress, you know what I mean by green light?
Uh, with an SEO plugin, it'll tell you how good you're, uh, targeting that particular keywords that you've got in there, whether that's the right one or not. Um, but you essentially wanna make sure that your landing page, that you're, you've. Optimized. And yes, landing pages need to be SEO optimized regardless of whether they've got ads pointing them to them or not.
Uh, your landing page is your key cornerstone content. It's what's going to convert clients. So you want it to be optimized because what it means is the difference between spending, um, you know, a dollar per click versus, you know, even in some cases $10 per click. Think about it from, uh, say a lawyer perspective.
Um, a cost per click. Recommendation, if you're using certain tools to give you a rough estimate, um, could be, you know, in the realm of 10 to 15, sometimes $20 per click, digital transformation, $48 cost per click. Wow. Now you can actually use that as a guide if you've got really well. Structured, SEO, uh, very well optimized website, that $48 per cost per click can actually go down to $5 cost per click.
It just depends on how well you've utilized the strategy in harmony with your Google Ads. So whatever you're targeting over here, uh, in your SEO needs to be targeted in and structured around your Google Ads campaign as well. And there's multiple levels of that as well.
Yeah. Excellent. So the strategy is so incredibly important.
So let's talk a little bit about virtual assistants then and, um, because there's this massive, you know, trend towards getting virtual assistants, whether or not they Australian freelancers or in-house marketing managers or offshore virtual assistants to, to come on and manage the marketing, right? And for example, they might say to them, the business owner might say to them, right, virtual assistant, thank you very much.
Now I want you to manage the SEO. Okay, so what are some of the, the pros and cons that you, or some of the things that you've seen with business owners saying to the virtual assistant? Okay, you go manage the SEO. Bearing in mind that I always say is that virtual assistants and your marketing managers are absolutely phenomenal implementers and will implement whatever you give them, but they do need the strategy.
While VAs are great to get stuff done, um, you still need expert direction. So you need to be able to give them what they need to publish, um, because they're essentially across many tasks. So, and it's a common issue that we've come across in the past. I'll just get my VA to do it. Um. Hold up if we're doing this and, yeah, no, you've gotta do this first.
They, you've gotta tell them, uh, or give them the actual SEO to implement and tell them where, um, and they'll miss a lot of the technical aspects of SEO. So it's not just content, it's uh, it's alt tags on images, it's the alt tags on links. It's making sure that they have ticked every box on that SEO checklist as far as technical snippets go and things like that.
And not just publishing on the website, but pushing it out to goo Google business profile as well, uh, and to use social media to bring them back into the website and whatnot. So, uh, there's a lot of, there's definitely, uh, an informed strategy required when dealing with virtual assistants and, um, you've, as far as copy.
When you're looking at SEO, uh, copy, it really needs to be informed by a specific style of marketing that your clients resonate with. And, uh, what is a problem? Agitate solution is a favorite for a lot. Um, but for SEO in general, for Google, it's the E-E-E-A-T expertise. Um. Forgive me, I've the, the, the acronym's gone.
But essentially establish your, your expertise, provide examples, and give authority and build trust and, and engage them with the CTA. Um, so it's, that is what Google loves. Uh, in other words, showing that you. Know what you, what you're doing, you can deliver and you can prove that as well. Um, so building up that reputation management is a key part to the SEO, which a lot of people miss.
Mm, yeah. So true. Um, and I think when it comes to outsourcing your marketing to somebody, um, often the business owners can better communic. Who they help and what they do. So coming up with the long tail, you know, phrases and really understanding the customers comes a lot easier to them. But when they outsource it to a marketing manager or virtual assistant, um, especially if we're talking about going offshore, it's not their fault.
But the reality is, is that they may not truly understand what that product is. And I'll use an example. I'm working with a client at the moment in New Zealand who owns a fencing company, um, and their virtual assistant is in the Philippines, and they don't have. Timber fencing in the Philippines. So when you try, when you're getting the virtual assistant now to create content about timber fencing, it now becomes absolutely imperative that the business owner spends time with them to give them the SEO strategy to help them in the effective communication.
Of, um, being able to communicate the product. Um, and this is something that I do obviously when we are working with business owners, we, we help them with their content plan. We come up with the branding, the key messages, and the content pillars. Um, and that's important because therefore you've now got the recipe that you can hand to someone.
So there's a base level that they can at least start from
just to kind of reign that one in. Um, your VA is only as good as. What you give them. So, um, if you are giving them a piecemeal approach, then that's what you're gonna get when it comes to actually having people engage with your content. Um, so don't necessarily.
Get rid of your va, give them the right stuff. Give them the content, give them what they need and be specific. Um, so, you know, tie in chat, GTP if you like to go. Right? So here's the. Here's what I want to be, uh, implemented. Tell chat to Peter to create instructions based on this for your platform. And then they will have a step-by-step, um, instructions in order to implement properly.
Yeah. Awesome. So let's talk a little bit about Chachi BT then, because a lot of, um, businesses are going into, you know, chat GBT, it's either the business owner or the virtual assistants and they're going, you know, for example, create an SEO blog. But if they haven't customized their chat, GPT or if they haven't actually, um, gone in and explained to chat GPT who their ideal client is and what they're struggling with, and they don't have that overall strategy, what you're gonna get as cookie cutter.
So talk a little bit about chat, GPT, um, and what you find, um, with chat GPT doing SEO, uh, that's a, that's a mixed bag.
Uh, how long do we have left? Um, okay, so chat, GTP is uh, often. Misused by, uh, the general public business owners. Um, you know, whether they have time to actually go in and, and train. Train, and I say train the model.
Mm-hmm. Um, so chat to TP is, you know, very cool. Get in there, have a play, do some things. Wow. It can write an email. Oh my god. It can do that. Um, okay. It doesn't mean it's good or Right, exactly. Um, so there's, here's, here's something you can literally, um, take and implement straight away for your business.
Um, chat, JTP has your conversations and then it's got projects. Not too many people actually know that you've got projects in there. Um, so think of it like, uh, deep, uh, compartmentalizing, uh, process for chat two dp. So if you set up a new project, you can in give it instructions and a set of grounding files.
So it's almost like, uh, if you are, if you've got, I guess a little bit of an understanding of, uh, from a design perspective, you've got a brand kit. Okay. That brand kit is your colors, your logos, images, your fonts, all that. And it, you're not going to deter from that as a designer. So think about your chat tippy project, kind of like that brand kit.
Um, you give it instructions for whatever the purpose of that project is. In chat p you put your files that you want to adhere to, but you need to connect that with the instructions, and then you've got. A nice, neat little cube that is not gonna interact with any of the other conversations in your chat, GTP.
And that's what's happening if you're not getting chat GTP to punch out content that you want it to do or be on task, on brand on, on topic. Um, it's because you've got too much noise in there. And noise. Oh my god, so many, so much. Uh, you get a lot of noise. Is it, uh, is it noise or value for your business?
So, um, organization is just brilliant and because I'm so data centric. Um, I've got to have organization and I've got, you know, all my little projects and things, and it's great as a drafting tool for SEO, um, but not for it. It's, you've really gotta, uh, work with it so you've. Basically gotta write your blog, drop it in there, and go.
And then it will pay attention to very specific instructions that you want to give it. So if you've got a, a particular phrase that you want to target, it will check it against, and you be specific, yo, for example. Um, but the trouble with that is, and this is the drawback, this is the, the, the con. It's not necessarily gonna know about everything else you've got on your side.
Mm. And nine times outta 10, it'll give you something that's going to clash for something else on your site.
Mm. So relevancy is so important for every platform. Yeah. So, so, so important. Um, look, I love so much of what you said there. I definitely use projects. I think it's awesome. Um, and, and you're talking about clutter.
If you think about a business like a, a business owner and the clutter they've got in their brain and how overwhelmed and scattered you are with everything, um, it's the same as like having a multitasking brain. A reactive brain versus a proactive brain who, single tasks, it's exactly the same. And it's the same as if you throw stuff at your virtual assistant and you're not giving them actual, you know, structured components of what you're doing.
So it doesn't make sense to them. I love so much of that. Um, and the other problem that I see as well with the virtual assistants is that. A lot of business owners don't wanna give their virtual assistant access to their chat GPT. So what they do is they say to the virtual assistant to use their own. Um, and if you've got a freelancer, virtual assistant, um, they have got 10 other businesses inside their chat, GPT, um, they haven't customized their chat, GPT and many of them will have a free chat GBT.
So unfortunately, uh, that's what you're going to get. So for myself, my virtual assistants all log in. They've all got their own working project channels that they can work in. And then whenever I'm writing blogs, we've got a blog project so we can actually train it in that we can feed all our SEO words into there.
We can do all our research and put it in there so we can make sure that we are doing things strategically. We are not just shotgun approaching everything, we're doing things strategically, which is so important. Um, okay, cool. So we've spoken a lot about that. Let's talk about onsite. 'cause a lot of people might not understand some of these words, right?
So onsite, SEO versus offsite, SEO.
Uh, great question. And that there's a lot of, how do you say, um, you know, legacy approaches to SEO, which have kind of gone out the window because it creates too much. Platter too much noise. Um, but onsite, SEO is obviously all your technical bits, your content, your brand, your, um, whole holistic approach for, uh, synergy and, um, you know, relevance across your site.
Uh, if you're building it up with too many, too many different things and creating too much noise on your website, Google's gonna go, what exactly do they specialize in? Okay, so that, so that's your onsite. Offsite is very much, very much misunderstood. And, um, you know, half of, uh, people that I talk to about who, you know, come to me specifically for SEO do you do offsite?
Um, yes. No, because I say no, because people seem to think that, oh, do you do directory listings? No, we don't do director listings. No, I'm not going to fubar your visibility by adding your site randomly into this, this, this, this, this, this directory. Why? Because, uh, directory listings are just noise. They're most likely, uh, a business listing here.
Uh, I've actually gone in, um, after, you know, they've come from, uh, another, I'm not gonna say the brands, um, but another big, uh, SEO company here, here, here that will put directory listings. California, Africa, Belgium, the uk. I am like, what? Why? Just why So, to look, there's a lot of dis yeah, there's a lot of disavow stuff that ends up needing to happen to clean it up because they service, uh, they, they, they're, they're like a, uh, a local, uh, clinic here in, in, uh, gold Coast or, or Logan.
Um, they've got no, nothing to do with you, Kat. Nothing to do with us. Uh, so why have they got a listing over there? You know? So, uh, just purely for the back link, okay. We've done something. Tick that box. No. Uh, so offsite is your Google business profile. You push your blocks, you go over there, your, your social signals.
So you're building content in your social media, whether that's Facebook, Insta, um, TikTok, dare I say it? Mm. Uh, LinkedIn. Um, so depending on where your marketplace, that's where you want to be more active. These are links back to your site. These are backlinks. Yep. Um, and if you're choosing backlinks with.
Say brand partners or other websites, top level websites, dot org, dot edu, dot, uh, au. Even. Uh, you wanna make sure they're in your, in, in your lane, like in your industry at least. Relevancy, relevancy. Relevancy. Exactly. And this is your offsite. So this is what helps you to, to get more, you've got more content or more, um.
More traffic coming in, more, uh, domain authority because of where you are placing your, your links to your, to your site.
Awesome. I mean, that's exactly why I do the podcast. You know, I do the podcast because now I can back link, I can back link to your business now. So you know, your. Your ideal client is my ideal client.
So there's a partnership here so we can go, well, you know, now I'm in front of your audience, you're in front of my audience, so we can use those back links. So, you know, that's a str, a strategic partnership. And a lot of people forget about strategic partnership marketing, which is so important and that's why guest blogging.
Is so important. Um, you know, joint ventures, um, events, it's covets is so important. Um, I wanna talk a little bit about, uh, go back to onsite, um, because there's some problems that I've been seeing recently when it comes to onsite seo mm-hmm. With websites, for example, there's a lot of business owners who are doing their own websites.
And then there's also a, a lot of, um, businesses that go, I want a cheap website because I'm starting out. Um, so they go and they get a virtual assistant, a freelancer or somebody to go and do a website. They pay $500 for it, and then they say, my website's not working. Well, I can tell you the website's not working because they're not doing all the marketing part of it as well, but it's because of the onsite and they're not doing it.
There's people that I know that have spent even some of them up to $5,000 on a website. When we go in and we have a look at it, they have not even done the foundational SEO stuff. They've gone into chat. PT created sales pages just gone plop, stuck it in there. The business owner's going, I've got such a pretty website, it looks amazing.
And they're going, well, it doesn't work, and it because it's just not getting done. The essential SEO, well. Getting a website done, um, for just, you know, to start there is not getting your SEO done and to get SEO done. You don't just want to pay, uh, you know, a web developer because they're, they don't know.
I've worked with plenty of web developers. They just don't know. They think they know and. No, no, just know we're gonna, we're gonna do this. Okay. Alright. Yep. Uh, but they miss all these other things. So you've got your, your landing pages, you've got all the structure in that page, all the content in that page, um, that needs the technical SEO applied, but they forget tags, categories, products, um, your blog categories, your blog tags, your, your, uh, product categories, your product tag, all these things, images, they.
In your entire media library. Mm-hmm. They, all of these things need technical SEO and when they're utilized in the page, they again, need additional SEO, um, not to mention that your plugins and, and all the, um, adages that. Tend to come with WordPress, for example, if you've gotten a cheaper website, they will generally use all these glorious plugins.
Like it's pretty, yeah, go in there, there's a 30 plus plugins. Say what? Um, or, or they've gone in and use, say, this amazing tool, which is convoluted and painful, called element or, uh, not gonna get started there. But, uh, in, in any case, it just, it. Website design and development is not SEO. You can pretty much expect to spend more on your SEO and marketing than you will on your website.
The website's just a start and it's an organic. Um, it, it's an organism. It's not, you don't pay and, and set and forget. Mm. You've got to continually invest in the upkeep of that site. And maintenance is not just plugin updates. Mm. Sorry guys. It's not, it's just not. You've got, uh, continually. Uh, issues that happen with, um, what do you call it, uh, issues that happen, uh, compatibility with different plugins and things.
Um, and then updates will kind of break something and you, you've gotta con constantly manage that on top of managing your, your blog publishing and all these other things. And. It's, it's, it's fun. So, so your website is a vehicle, right? It's a vehicle. So it's your vehicle. You've gotta, you've, so firstly, you've gotta service your vehicle.
Mm. You've gotta change the tires on it frequently, you know, you've gotta, uh, check the engine, put oil in it, like there's, there's the maintenance that happens with that vehicle. It's, but then on top of it, you've still gotta put fuel in it all the time. And for me, that's the marketing, that's the ongoing traffic to it.
It's supposed to be 75% of your business. Yeah. Uh, but before people actually turn around and, and realize that, hey, there's actually something to be had here with the SEO and the ads, um, with their website, their, their 75% word of mouth or referrals, right? Um, so this is where getting an expert, SEO in. Um, and looking after, like investing in website maintenance and continually investing in your marketing strategy, you can turn that around and have 75% of your business revenue come from your website, meaning that you have to work.
Well, if you're a serious business owner, the reality is, um, is that you have to invest in these things because they are your vehicles to generating leads and sales. Mm. Um, and it just drives me nuts when somebody goes, um, oh, I don't wanna invest money. I'm just, or I'm just starting out. Or even businesses that have been going for a long time don't wanna invest in it and don't wanna spend money on it.
And I'm like, if you wanna be a serious business owner, you need to, because the reality is your competitors are. So whoever, whoever does it best gets the client. That's, that's my rule. Whoever does it best gets the client. So you can either, you know, bury your head in a, bury your head in the sand or keep throwing money at ads that are never gonna work if you don't have this in place anyway.
Well, that's it. Um, what's the point? Like, I actually did something interesting at a, at a meeting just a little while ago. Um, nine times outta 10 people will invest in, say, Google ads before they do SEO. Um, and they'll, they'll put $50 a day in and. It's not working. They want me to increase my budget, so okay, we'll do a hundred.
Um, and that, so basically they're burning that a hundred dollars and, uh, if they were to get an expert, SEO and ads partner, like Ranking Australia, for example, uh, they could turn around and spend. That a hundred dollars a day, not just on ad spend, but our services and turn that into a 400% return on investment at a minimum.
Oh, excellent. All right, well that's it for us today. Thank you so much for joining me. So, um, you've got a resource today that you can share with everyone.
Yes, of course. So, uh, if you go to ranking australia.com au you'll be able to book a free Google discovery call. So, um, that means 15 minutes, maybe longer, uh, to have a chat with me and get some key takeaways as to what's next for your digital strategy.
That's awesome because Google is the number one search engine. So thank you so much for joining us today. Uh, this is Chantal from the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. If you haven't already, please make sure that you like and rate us. Um, and comment below. Leah, thanks for listening in. Meaningful marketing is all about you making your marketing meaningful.
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