This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's caller is wondering about SEO, also known as search engine optimization. You've probably heard of that. You might know something about it already. It's something mentioned in a lot of our stories. A lot of our case studies are talking about how they have improved their business or got the word out to potential customers.
And they say something about search engine rankings or search engine results, trying to get ranked in Google or other sites. Now, basically our caller is wondering, like you'll hear more from them, basically they're wondering, can everyone do this? Like can everyone improve their SEO? And actually if everybody improves their SEO, won't everyone just be at the same level? So is it all fruitless?
Is it all essentially an arms race where everyone's trying to level up, but therefore no one's really getting ahead? Not a bad question at all, but as you'll hear, I do think it's worth paying some attention to SEO. And not just because it's an arms race, okay? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Thanks for tuning in the detailed question and my answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hi Chris, this is Carl. And I've been listening to the show for a couple of years. Many of the case studies and success stories cover the importance of learning SEO. On the one hand, I get it. But on the other hand, if everyone is always trying to get their site rank first and search engines, isn't it a zero sum game?
Not only that, but I imagine since this can be so lucrative, big companies have people or agencies working on SEO full time. So why should we even try? Do enough people just ignore the whole thing that it's worth it? Or is there some other benefit I'm not seeing? Looking forward to hearing what you have to say about this.
[Music]
Hey, thanks so much for the question. Really glad you brought this up. Glad you're out there as well. SEO is not just an arms race or a zero sum game. You might think it's a zero sum game if you're like there's one search term and only the top three companies or brands can win it.
But that's really not how it works because even though the top spots are most important, there's still some value in having lower ranked spots. Like some people are still going to find you. And then also like much more importantly, like there are so many search terms. Like there are just so many search terms, you wanna compete on all the ones that are less obvious. What you wanna do is find search terms and there are keyword tools that will help you do this by the way.
This is not just trying to guess. You can go to a search engine keyword tool, type in what you think your number one keyword is. Like if you sell protein powder, you type that in. It's gonna give you all kinds of results. It will show you what people are actually searching for.
There's gonna be so many different variations, whether it is protein powder or some kind of service or just whatever it is. There's gonna be lots of different options there. You wanna find phrases that are relatively high in search volume but have few competitors. Search results where people actually are typing these words in and going to those pages, but there's not a lot of other people that are trying to target those phrases. So that's a big part of it.
I would absolutely not write off SEO. And also like just a little bit of attention goes a long way. You don't have to be an expert in it. Just making sure your pages are optimized. There are various WordPress plugins and other tools that do that for you.
Essentially, at least do most of it and making sure that you have a few key phrases in mind that you're targeting. That is a great start. As I said, a little attention goes a long way. I would not write it off. So thanks for allowing me to clarify that.
I hope that's helpful to somebody out there. You definitely want people to go to your website, right? I mean, that's the whole point of these things. So put some time into it. If you've got a question of your own or something you're trying to figure out, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what you're working on, what you're up against and what your big wins are.
I'd love to share them with our whole community and I'll have a new episode for you every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
