This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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In today's episode, we unravel the mystery behind SEO success. We've got a listener question. She's from London wondering about how a prominent Google listing can transform her online boutiques traffic and sales. Now, of course, SEO is a critical tool for anybody looking to enhance their online presence. Draw more traffic to your website, which is often what it's about, right?
You want more traffic coming to your website, you want the right kind of traffic coming, so that traffic can then convert to sales, to leads, email addresses, some other conversion, like there's always a conversion goal, and by bringing more traffic to your website, at least the right kind of traffic, then you can therefore increase all your other metrics as well. So she's wondering specifically how much are prominent Google listings worth? How can she improve her site's ranking to do that? Let's talk about it. Her name is Sarah, her detailed question, and my answer coming up after this quick shout out to our sponsor.
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Hi, I'm Sarah from London, and I run an online boutique that sells throughout the UK and Europe, and occasionally to America. I've been reading about SEO and the importance of ranking high on Google searches. Can you explain how much a prominent Google listing is worth in terms of traffic and potential sales? And how much can I improve my site's ranking to achieve this? - Hey Sarah, thanks for the question.
We've talked about SEO a few times. I think I had a question once that was like, is SEO a scam? And my answer is there are a lot of scams within SEO. There are a lot of people who are happy to take your money. They promise to provide you good search engine results, and then nothing happens.
So the industry as a whole is not necessarily wholesome, but in terms of the value of good SEO, that is tremendous. The value of SEO, like if you are in the top of Google for a competitive search term, that can be millions of dollars. It all depends on what your industry is, of course, but if you're selling something that's expensive and a lot of people are searching for it and you have a good profit margin, then having a prominent Google listing would be worth a lot of money. So because it's worth a lot of money, it is valuable. That's why it's a competitive field.
And that's why everybody's trying to do anything that they can to influence the results according to what they think Google wants, which changes a bit over time. But there are some principles. So the number one thing you wanna do is identify what are the relevant keywords that I'm going to target? Like what are people searching for to find the products or services that I'm offering? So figuring out what those keywords are and then developing your content around those keywords, there's more to it, but that is the big picture overview of what you do in the world of SEO.
There's some other things like developing backlinks from other sites that are linking to you. So it's not just Google, like Google notices that sites with high authority see your site as a good solution for what people are searching for. You can improve user experience, like how fast the page loads, how good the navigation is, the quality of the images. These are some small things, but the biggest thing is just figuring out what those keywords are and how can you craft the content around them. Maybe those are blog posts, product reviews, how-to guides.
We've also talked about how so many search results now are built entirely around what Google is looking for or what people think Google is looking for. And that's not always the greatest experience for your average user. That's why when you search for stuff, the results that you find are not always so great, but it's because it's all a big game. So Sarah, it actually has tremendous value and a few things you can do to improve your site's ranking are to focus on those keywords and develop content around them. And finally, anything to improve the user experience, such as the loading times on your website.
Sarah, good luck. Listeners, good luck cheering you on, wishing you well, sidehustleschool.com. Today is episode 2,660. Much more is coming up. Thanks for being out there.
You can always listen for free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
