Led by Associate Director of SEO for Blavity Inc., Lilian Ogbuefi, this 45-minute webinar covers the best practices for search engine optimization and key learnings from Blavity owned and operated brands.
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00:00All right.
00:04Welcome everybody.
00:06Thank you so much for joining.
00:11Just a few more seconds for people to come on in.
00:19Thank you for coming.
00:20My name is Tiana.
00:22I am a part of the Blavity Media Solutions team
00:25directly supporting Blavity 360
00:28where we're going to be providing a lot of products,
00:33tools, tips, tricks, hacks for digital publishers,
00:38sharing all the insights that Blavity has learned from
00:42over the years and been able to grow
00:44into a successful business with.
00:46And so this is the first of what will become
00:51a monthly series with Blavity 360 webinars
00:55that are just helping digital publishers
00:58and businesses grow.
01:01And so this month I am happy to introduce Lily Ogwuefi
01:07who is the Associate Director of SEO for Blavity.
01:11She's an expert at creating SEO focused content strategies
01:15including but not limited to keyword ideation,
01:19keyword implementation, traffic generation,
01:22backlinking and meta tagging.
01:24With over six years of experience,
01:26Lily's developed many content strategy solutions
01:29for both e-commerce and digital publishing brands
01:31like yours, one of which increased brand offerings
01:34and stimulated a revenue increase from $4.2 million
01:38to $20.6 million within the span of one year
01:42during her time at Breezy LLC.
01:44So we're very lucky to have her as part of the Blavity team.
01:47And we're very excited that she's here
01:49to share her knowledge and expertise in the SEO field
01:51with all of us today.
01:53So with that said, I will kick it off over to you, Lily.
01:57Thanks so much for joining and sharing your time
01:59with us today.
02:03Thank you, that was a great introduction.
02:06Let me see if I can share my screen
02:09and then we can get this started.
02:11Okay, amazing.
02:12All right.
02:14I tried to make the slides a little bit entertaining
02:17because SEO is supposed to be entertaining
02:20despite what anyone says.
02:23But let's start with a brief rundown of what SEO is.
02:27So SEO stands for search engine optimization.
02:31And in simple terms, it means the process
02:33of improving your websites
02:35to increase its visibility on Google.
02:38So whenever you search for something on Google,
02:43and I'm sure everyone here does,
02:45so it could be that you're hungry
02:46and you're trying to figure out what to eat
02:48and you're searching for food near me
02:51or Chinese food near me,
02:52or maybe you've heard about like Beyonce being on tour
02:55and she's doing stuff with Blue Ivy
02:56and you're searching for that.
02:58Whatever you're searching for on Google
03:00and all the sites that appear
03:02when you search for those things,
03:04that's happening because some SEO work has been done.
03:10And then why is SEO important?
03:12So the very big thing,
03:14and the reason why every publisher,
03:16every business is trying to get their SEO efforts up
03:19is visibility.
03:20When you appear on the first page of Google,
03:23you get organic traffic.
03:26And the biggest part of that is evergreen traffic.
03:28So for most publishers, when they create a story,
03:32it probably lives on the site
03:33and gets traffic for like a couple of days and it dies out.
03:36But then when you create an SEO focused story
03:40and it gets to where you want it to be,
03:42you can have a story that has given you traffic
03:44every single day for the next five to 10 years.
03:47It's little effort that gives you a lot more growth
03:53and a lot more sustainable growth
03:54than when you're doing just trending content.
03:57The other thing that's important about SEO
04:00is it's good for brand awareness.
04:02So when you search for,
04:03and I can give you an example real quick.
04:05Let's say I have a headache
04:07and I'm Googling why is my head aching.
04:12The results that I see on the first page
04:14Harvard University, WebMD, Cleveland Clinic,
04:18I see these websites all the time
04:19when I search for anything that has to do with my health.
04:22And so now I know a lot more about that brand.
04:24I may not have heard about this brand
04:27before searching for this,
04:29but now like the more I search for content like this,
04:32I'm seeing WebMD, I know that they're the brand to trust
04:35for anything that's related to health.
04:39And then the other part of that
04:40is better informed journalism.
04:42So the amount of research
04:45that goes into creating SEO content
04:47shows you what your audience is searching for.
04:50And that helps you figure out
04:51what kind of content to create for them.
04:53So you're not going in blind.
04:55You're not like starting a pitch session
04:58and you're like,
04:58oh, I don't know what to pitch for this week
05:00because you already have the data there
05:02of what people are looking for.
05:03And all you need to do is create the content
05:05that matches that.
05:10Does anyone have any questions so far?
05:15All right, okay.
05:21The three major aspects of SEO
05:24are keyword research, content production and technical SEO.
05:29So with keyword research,
05:31that's you basically trying to find and analyze the terms
05:34that people search for on Google or Bing
05:37or whatever the search engine is,
05:39even though we only care,
05:40we mostly care about Google these days.
05:43And then after you have the keyword research done,
05:46the next part of that is content production.
05:48And that's where you take the information
05:51that you've gotten from the keywords
05:52and you're creating valuable content for your audience.
05:55And then the third part of that is technical SEO.
05:58So that's just making sure
05:59that you're improving the technical aspects
06:02of your websites to help search engines like Google
06:05find, crawl and index your pages.
06:07Because if you're creating content
06:09and Google cannot find it,
06:10then that kind of defeats the purpose.
06:14I'm going to take a bit here and say that
06:17even though technical SEO is like a component of this,
06:20if you don't have the resources to get into that yet
06:23and you can only do keyword research and content production,
06:26that's enough for you to start to see results.
06:30The technical aspect just,
06:32it really boosts the effort that you've made
06:35with the keyword research and the content production.
06:38So this is just an example here of some articles
06:44that appear on Google and specific keywords related to them.
06:50How to manifest someone, Megan Good
06:52and I can't remember the other celebrity,
06:54but they talk a lot about manifesting their partners.
06:57And let's say that story was trending at some point
07:00and you wanted to create something of manifestation.
07:03This keyword gets 9,900 monthly search volumes.
07:08So an average of 9,900 people are searching for this
07:11every single month.
07:12And that also means that if you're one of the people
07:14that show up on the first page,
07:16when I search for how to manifest someone,
07:22you're going to get constant traffic
07:25just from people clicking on this
07:26and reading on this from that search term.
07:30And over here is another example.
07:33If you're searching for Beyonce net worth,
07:36or if you're trying to create that story,
07:37110,000 people are searching for that every single month.
07:40And think about how many celebrities we have.
07:44Celebrities of color, celebrities in general,
07:46there's always going to be questions about their net worth,
07:49their relationships and things like that.
07:51And those kinds of stories leave evergreen on Google.
07:55So you can create that story once
07:58and as long as you keep it updated,
08:00you're constantly getting traffic to your site
08:02from that one story.
08:05I'm going to stop sharing for a bit
08:07to see if anyone has any questions.
08:17Looks like we have one from Naya Chapman.
08:20She asks, how do you find relevant keywords?
08:24Okay, that is amazing
08:27because I'm about to get to that slide.
08:30I'm going to answer your question in a second.
08:33Okay.
08:36These are the four,
08:38the tools that are best for finding relevant keywords.
08:43So the first one is specific SEO tools.
08:45There are so many of this,
08:47but I'm recommending SEMrush and Ahrefs
08:50because that's just like, it's way easier
08:54and it gives you more information
08:55than any other tool out there.
08:58The other one is Google Autocomplete.
09:00So that's when you type something
09:02in your search bar on Google
09:04and Google autofills that for you
09:06based on searches that other people have done.
09:10And I'm going to do a quick demonstration
09:12on this in a second.
09:13The third is People Also Ask.
09:16So it's a search feature in Google
09:18that shows other queries or questions
09:20that people are entering into Google.
09:23And the fourth one is Google Trends.
09:25Google Trends shows you what is trending in real time
09:28and what was popular in a particular period.
09:31So I use SEMrush for most of my keyword research
09:36and I'm going to do a quick demonstration right here.
09:40If I wanted to write an article on love languages,
09:47I would type love languages into this box.
09:53And it would give me a ton of ideas.
09:55Every single thing it's showing me here
09:57is data on what people are actually searching
10:00for every month.
10:02This number right here is the search volume.
10:04So that's how many people are searching for it in a month.
10:07And then this number right here where it says KD
10:10is the keyword difficulty.
10:13The higher the number,
10:15the harder it is to rank for that content.
10:17The lower the number,
10:18the easier it is to rank for that content.
10:21So depending on your domain authority,
10:24your sites might like,
10:26I feel like a sweet spot is probably like 50 and below.
10:31And the other thing above that, it's like super hard.
10:33It's probably besides like CNN, Huffington Post
10:37and maybe Mayo Clinic that kind of hit those numbers.
10:42So here's an example.
10:44There's five love languages,
10:47acts of service love languages,
10:51tests.
10:52And you just have to keep scrolling
10:53to figure out what really works for your story.
10:57Another example would be,
10:59let's say I want to do something on communication,
11:03what to write in a card.
11:05Because personally I have that,
11:08this is just an example.
11:09Let's say I run into issues
11:11when I'm trying to send cards to people
11:13and I don't necessarily know what to say.
11:16And I feel like I may be able to create an article
11:18that is beneficial for people in that sense.
11:22I would just type what to write in here
11:25and it would give me all the examples that I need.
11:27So what to write in a sympathy card,
11:3027,000 people are searching for that monthly.
11:33And then there's wedding card, birthday card,
11:35baby shower, and so on and so forth.
11:39The other example that I'm going to give
11:41is Google auto-complete.
11:45So if you type in what to do,
11:53Google auto-fills it out for you here.
11:56And all these examples it's showing you
11:58is what people are searching for.
12:00The only difference between using this
12:02and using SEMrush is, or any other SEO tool,
12:06is those tools give you the exact numbers.
12:08So you know if there's a lot of people searching for it
12:11or if there's not that many people searching for it,
12:14as opposed to auto-complete
12:15where it just gives you the ideas
12:16but you're not necessarily seeing the numbers
12:18and the data behind that.
12:20Another example that we can use is wide domain.
12:27And so you can see all the examples here.
12:29Whatever you put into Google,
12:31as far as you don't type the complete thing out,
12:36it would give you some auto...
12:38This might not be a good example.
12:42It would give you some auto-complete
12:43based on what people are searching for on Google.
12:48And then people also ask, here's how you find that.
12:53For people also ask,
12:54you have to actually search for something completely.
12:56So who is the richest black man in America?
13:01Obviously you guys know what this looks like.
13:03Like you have all your results on Google,
13:05but if you look at this section here,
13:08it's showing you some related questions
13:11that people are asking about.
13:12So you might search for this and then you might decide,
13:15you know what?
13:16Maybe I don't want to write a story
13:17on the richest black man in America.
13:19Maybe I want to write a story
13:21on the top five richest African-Americans
13:24or the top 10 richest black people
13:27or the first black American billionaire.
13:29Essentially what this does is give you additional ideas
13:33related to the initial thing that you searched for.
13:36And it's additional ideas
13:38based on what people are also asking.
13:41So it's pretty self-explanatory.
13:45The final one that I wanted to show you is Google Trends.
13:50And just FYI, every single tool here,
13:53except for this, is free.
13:56Any tool that's from Google is completely free.
13:58So you don't need to pay to use this.
14:02Google Trends is great if you're like an entertainment site
14:07or even if you're a lifestyle site
14:09and you're trending content from time to time.
14:12It shows you what's trending in real time
14:16and what's also trending over time.
14:18So for example, if I click on trending now,
14:24I can see, I don't know what this is.
14:25Diablo 4, it's probably a movie,
14:27but that movie is trending right now.
14:31Robert De Niro is trending, Ted Lasso finale is trending.
14:35This is a daily search trend.
14:36If I go to real-time search trends,
14:38in the past 24 hours, this is what has been trending.
14:42I think another interesting way to use Google Trends
14:45that I personally prefer
14:46is seeing how a particular topic is trending over time.
14:51So for example, the Bridgerton series
14:54was just released a few weeks ago.
14:58If I search for Bridgerton here, television series,
15:02and change this filter to 30 days,
15:05it's going to show me, okay, this is like perfect.
15:09It trended upwards around this time,
15:11which was exactly when the series was released
15:13and now it's trending downwards.
15:15But it's also showing me the different questions
15:18that people are asking around this.
15:20So porphyria is a disorder
15:22that people are asking questions about.
15:25And I'm guessing it has something to do with the plots.
15:28What's wrong with George Bridgerton?
15:30What's wrong with King George?
15:31These are questions that are trending about Bridgerton.
15:34So if you, as a publisher,
15:36wanted to create an article about Bridgerton
15:38or multiple articles,
15:40and you wanted it to go further
15:42than just reviewing the plot or reviewing the actors,
15:46this could be a standalone story.
15:49What was wrong with King George in Bridgerton?
15:52Like that could be a standalone story
15:54because people are constantly asking that question.
15:58And just FYI, I'm giving this example
16:00because I know a brand that actually did this
16:03and they got a ton of traffic in that short period,
16:06both on search and both on social,
16:09because again, Google Trends is showing you
16:11what is trending.
16:12So at that point in time, when you publish that,
16:15you start to see immediate returns.
16:19I am stopping share again for a second
16:23just to see if anyone has any questions.
16:27Okay.
16:29I have a quick question for you, Lily.
16:32For you and your line of work that you do,
16:35how often are you checking things like Google Trends?
16:39I'm sure like changes pretty often, daily,
16:45if not like a couple of times per day.
16:46So how often are you checking these different tools?
16:51For SEMrush, I use SEMrush on a daily basis.
16:55My entire life and work and all the recommendations
16:58that I give the brands that I work with rely on SEMrush.
17:02I don't use Google Trends as often
17:05because the brands that I also work with
17:07don't publish that much trending content.
17:10So SEMrush is on a daily basis.
17:13Google Trends is whenever something is trending.
17:16I don't use it.
17:16SEMrush is on a daily basis.
17:18Google Trends is whenever something is trending
17:20or whenever we want to create trending content.
17:24And I have a great example, actually.
17:25One of the brands that I worked with in the past
17:27wanted to create content around gym and exercising.
17:32And so I had put that exact word gym in Google Trends
17:37and it showed me questions
17:39that were trending around the gym.
17:40And one of them was very interesting.
17:43What is vibing in the gym?
17:45I don't know if anyone here is familiar with that
17:47or like when that trended,
17:50but it's essentially when you,
17:54excuse me, because this is a professional setting,
17:56but it's essentially when you dab your vagina juices
18:01on your body in the gym to attract the male guys,
18:08basically, and men.
18:09And it has something to do with pheromones.
18:12I don't know the full extent on that,
18:14but I remember that brand created that story
18:16and they worked with experts
18:19to either support that point or debunk the point
18:22or just basically explain the trend
18:23and share more about whether or not it works.
18:27And they got about close to 50K traffic
18:31in a very short time.
18:32The thing about Google Trends is it's not as long lived
18:36as your other evergreen SEO efforts,
18:39but you also know when you're creating that
18:41that you're just doing it for the trend.
18:42So in the short time that it works, it works really well.
18:50It looks like we have a couple questions.
18:53Yeah, feel free to answer.
18:57Okay, for Micah Davis,
19:01how often should you do updates to stories
19:03so that they continue to rank high?
19:06That's a great question.
19:08In the past, one of the core things
19:14that every SEO person would tell you
19:16is that when you create a story and it starts to rank,
19:18make sure you're updating it periodically.
19:21So if a story does super well,
19:23maybe updates it like two to three times a year.
19:28If it doesn't do that,
19:29if it's not as high performing as the others,
19:31maybe you can do once or twice.
19:33I think that is still true.
19:35The only other thing that I would say
19:38is I'm beginning to notice on SERPs,
19:42and that's just basically like the Google pages,
19:46that updating an article is simply not enough
19:51just because there's so many people creating new content.
19:54So as much as you're updating your articles,
19:57make sure that you're also putting,
20:00let me use a ratio so this is more easy to understand.
20:05If you're putting 40% of your efforts
20:08into updating articles,
20:10make sure you're putting 60% into creating new articles
20:14because at some point,
20:16like your article might live on Google
20:18for maybe a year or two years
20:20and it's constantly giving you traffic.
20:22Then after two years,
20:23somebody else produces a new article on the same topic
20:27and Google might feel like,
20:28you know what, this new article is way better.
20:31It's fresher.
20:32This is, we're going to outrank you.
20:33And sometimes you might update the article
20:36and get your ranking back.
20:38Sometimes you may not.
20:39So that's why I like strongly believe
20:42in continuously doing research,
20:44continuously creating new content
20:46as opposed to just creating content as a one-and-done thing
20:49and depending completely on updates.
20:53Danielle wants to know how I've leveraged Google Trends.
20:59I work with shoe cleaner brands as a client
21:02and I could use like a tool like this
21:03for being fairly useful.
21:07Is Google Trends only relative for inspired content creation
21:10around what's popular and not so much keyword targeting?
21:17Yes and no.
21:19You can use Google Trends for keyword targeting
21:22if you already know what the keyword
21:24you're trying to work with is.
21:27I feel like Google,
21:29for what you're trying to do, Danielle,
21:32Google Trends work if you use it in conjunction
21:34with SEMrush.
21:36So for example, you working with the shoe cleaner brands,
21:40you've done your keyword research
21:41and you found out that the keyword that you want to target
21:45is shoe cleaning tools that you can find in your home.
21:49That's like a super random and vague example,
21:52but just bear with me.
21:53If that's the keyword that you're trying to work with,
21:55you can put that into Google Trends
21:58and Google Trends will actually show you
22:01like how people are searching for that over time.
22:03And honestly, I can do a quick example here.
22:11Okay.
22:13So SEMrush
22:20clean shoe, just to see what comes up.
22:24Okay, so let's say I have how to clean suede shoes
22:27and how to clean white shoes,
22:29and I want to figure out which one to go after.
22:34I can put both in Google Trends
22:40and just make sure you're clicking search term
22:42as opposed to topic,
22:43because sometimes it gives you both options.
22:48Past 12 months.
22:49And this seems pretty standard to me.
22:53Like the trend seems pretty,
22:56it's not very drastic in either way.
22:59So I feel like that's a good option.
23:02If I wanted to also compare with how to clean white shoes,
23:11this is showing me that this is trending upwards now.
23:15And that makes sense
23:15because we're getting into the summer months.
23:17I don't think anyone's wearing white shoes in the winter.
23:21So that's kind of how this would work for this.
23:24And you can use this without SEMrush
23:30doing the exact same thing that I did.
23:32The only benefit with SEMrush for this,
23:35like I mentioned earlier,
23:36is that you actually have the exact numbers.
23:39Google Trends is not going to show you
23:41how many people are searching for all of this.
23:43It's just going to show you the trend of the search.
23:45But SEMrush actually shows you
23:47how many people are searching for this.
23:48So you know that, okay, 27,000 people, that's not bad,
23:52as opposed to like 100 people,
23:55because there also are keywords like that
23:57where it's just only 100 people searching for it.
24:03Okay.
24:06So you've done all the keyword research.
24:08What's next?
24:09Content production and optimization.
24:12When you create any piece of content
24:14using the research that you've done,
24:17make sure that you're providing 360 value to the query
24:20so that the user does not need to go to another website
24:23for more information.
24:25If I search for something and I go on Google
24:28and I click on one site,
24:30if I get all the information that I need,
24:33I'm not going to need to go back to Google
24:35and scroll and look for another site.
24:37And just FYI,
24:38Google recognizes when the user is doing all of these things.
24:41So they also know when your site is not providing
24:45all the information that it needs to provide.
24:48And to do that, you need to ask yourself,
24:50what does the user need to know right now?
24:55And what is some additional information
24:56that could be helpful to the user in this process?
25:00So I have a great example of this.
25:05Let's say I want to find out what Beyonce's net worth is.
25:11And I click on the very first site
25:13that gives me the answer.
25:16This site tells me exactly what her net worth is,
25:19500 million, which is amazing.
25:23Obviously as an article,
25:24it's going to have to,
25:25they're going to have to explain it in detail,
25:27which they did.
25:28So I already have all the answers that I need
25:31in this first paragraph.
25:33But the site goes even further
25:35to give me some more information
25:37as to how Beyonce amassed that wealth.
25:39So we are talking about her early life,
25:41Destiny's Child, her solo career.
25:45Her endorsement deals, Netflix deals.
25:48It's even answering the question
25:50that people probably are also asking,
25:51did Beyonce make 300 million of Uber?
25:55And then it goes even further
25:57and shows me her net worth over time
26:00and her net worth relating to real estate
26:04and then other fun facts.
26:06You may not need to be as extensive
26:08as this article is for whatever story,
26:11like it really depends on the story that you're creating.
26:13But for the most part,
26:14just making sure that you're answering
26:16all the questions that need to be answered
26:18related to that keyword.
26:20Another example that I can think about is,
26:23let's say you're trying to buy a lipstick
26:27and you Google the best lipstick for brown skin.
26:30If you're the publisher creating that story,
26:33you want to make sure that you're not only providing
26:36that list of the best lipsticks for brown skin,
26:40you're also providing maybe information
26:41on what to think about when you're buying a lipstick.
26:46Do you have oily skin or do you have chapped skin?
26:48And how does that affect the kind of lipstick
26:50that you're choosing?
26:51Whatever information that you think would be helpful
26:54to that user at that point in time,
26:56make sure they are covering the bulk of it in your article.
27:04So here's why this is important.
27:08There's something called EAT.
27:10Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust,
27:14aka the Google algorithm.
27:17If you're familiar with social media,
27:20like Instagram, Facebook,
27:22there's always talks about the algorithm.
27:24And I feel like for the most part,
27:26no one never really knows what the algorithm is
27:29because Instagram doesn't necessarily come out
27:31and say, this is our algorithm.
27:34Experts just guess what it's supposed to be
27:36based on what works.
27:38For SEO, Google tells us exactly what the algorithm is
27:41and exactly what we need to do to succeed.
27:45And this is just a quote from them.
27:48This EAT is how we evaluate if our search ranking systems
27:52are providing helpful, relevant information.
27:55With ordinary people feel the results they get
27:58demonstrates EAT.
28:00So essentially, if you have your keyword
28:03and you create content that demonstrates experience,
28:06expertise, authority, trust,
28:08which organically happens
28:10when you're providing that 360 value,
28:13you've already done 90% of the work.
28:19I'm going to stop sharing my screen for a second
28:22in case anyone has any questions
28:25on what we've just talked about.
28:31Okay, moving on.
28:36Okay, so once you've done the research,
28:43you've created a great article.
28:47These are some additional steps that you need to take
28:49to make sure that your story is fully optimized.
28:52So you'd want to include your keyword
28:55or a variation of your keyword in your title,
28:59your introduction,
29:01a couple of times within the body of your article,
29:03your SEO title, your SEO description, and your slug.
29:06I'm going to walk you through all of that
29:08so that you have a feel for what I'm talking about.
29:14When I say your keyword or a variation of your keyword,
29:19you may have done research
29:20and the keyword that you found was exercises for women.
29:25You don't necessarily have to use that exact same word
29:29every single time within the body of your article.
29:32You can say workouts for women.
29:33It means the exact same thing.
29:35Or you can say workouts for ladies.
29:37It means the exact same thing.
29:39And Google understands that.
29:41The only place where I would say be very strict
29:44in keeping the wording the same
29:47would be in the SEO title and in the slug.
29:50So here is a quick example.
29:54This article was recently created
29:56and the keyword in question was,
29:59is, would you rather questions for couples?
30:08Sorry.
30:09The keyword is probably a couple of times
30:12within the article,
30:13or maybe somewhere in the introduction.
30:17We're not really stoic here about, obviously,
30:20this is like if the intent of the user searching for,
30:26would you rather questions for couple
30:28is to find actual questions.
30:31We have 101 questions here.
30:32So I feel like we've already done the most thing
30:35that we need to do.
30:36The only other thing would be to, okay,
30:38optimize the title and so on and so forth.
30:41So over here is the SEO title.
30:46If you use WordPress, it should look exactly like this.
30:50If you have your own self-hosted CMS,
30:53it would probably be in the settings section,
30:56but it should say SEO title or meta title.
31:00Would you rather questions for couples
31:02goes in here in the title.
31:04It's also in the slug
31:06and it's somewhere in the meta description here.
31:13Honestly, as much as I'm saying this,
31:17I don't want you to think about this
31:18in a very stoic and cold way,
31:21because like I mentioned earlier,
31:23as far as you're creating content
31:24that provides value matching that keyword,
31:26you've done most of the work.
31:28So don't feel like you have to force the keyword
31:31if it doesn't work organically.
31:33This story is a great example
31:35because it's very easy to fit the keywords in there.
31:39But there'll be examples like where
31:41you may not be able to fit the keyword.
31:43If it goes in the slug
31:45and you're not able to fit it in the meta description,
31:48it's fine.
31:49Just find a different way to say it.
31:51And that's kind of what I mean
31:52by using the variation of the keyword.
31:58Lily, we have one question
32:00just about website template platforms.
32:03In your experience, do you find that there's any
32:05that are better than others at SEO optimization?
32:09A lot of people say,
32:10and a lot of experts also say that WordPress is the best
32:14because WordPress has been doing it for a very long time.
32:17WordPress also allows for plugins
32:21that make your optimization process easier
32:23that Squarespace might not have.
32:25So for example, Yoast, I don't think,
32:28I may be wrong, but I don't think Squarespace has Yoast.
32:32And that's the plugin that we're using to do this.
32:36But that's not to say that Squarespace is not a good option.
32:41Just most publishers tend to go for WordPress
32:43because it has more flexibility.
32:46If you are a small business or a small blog
32:49and you're not publishing a ton of content
32:51on a daily basis,
32:52then you may be able to get away with Squarespace,
32:56especially if it does provide you this section.
33:00I don't know if it does,
33:01but if you have this section to edit your SEO title
33:05and your slogan, your meta description,
33:06then that's the bulk of what you need.
33:13We also have another question.
33:17I think it might get on to further in your presentation,
33:21but about e-commerce and retail brands,
33:24any best practices to drive revenue?
33:27Yeah, I don't have a section for e-commerce,
33:29so I'm just going to answer that now.
33:34And can you clarify,
33:35is this an e-commerce brand creating their own content,
33:39sorry, their own products or an e-commerce brand
33:41selling products that kind of belong to other merchants?
33:46Great question.
33:47Ebony, if you heard that question,
33:50if you want to just throw that in there, both, she said.
33:53All right.
33:54Okay, so I worked with an e-commerce brand in the past,
33:58and one of the biggest things
34:00that made our content stand out on search
34:03was this section that I just explained to you,
34:06the SEO title and editing that.
34:10One of the things that the other retailers were doing
34:14that we were not,
34:15was we're making sure we had original content.
34:17So right now I'm speaking to,
34:19if you're selling products that belong to other merchants,
34:23if you're selling a foundation,
34:25let's say it's called Maybelline,
34:28that foundation, that product exists in different places.
34:31And I bet you,
34:32if you open every of those product links on Google,
34:36you would see that they have the same product description.
34:40And that's because they're copying and pasting
34:43exactly what the manufacturer has provided for them.
34:47And what many people don't know
34:49is that Google frowns a lot on plagiarism.
34:52It doesn't care that the manufacturer
34:54provided that information to you.
34:56If there's a ton of sites repeating the same information,
34:59like you're not, it's gonna derail your SEO efforts.
35:03So having original product descriptions,
35:05something that worked for us,
35:06and then making sure that we are optimizing the SEO title
35:10with the product name and whatever keyword
35:13that we're targeting also works.
35:16If you are a business owner that's selling products
35:20that belong to you, so not other people's products,
35:23your own products that you produced,
35:25you should do research around what people are searching for
35:29relating to your products.
35:30So everything that I've said works for publishers
35:34also works for businesses.
35:36If you're selling hair wraps, for example,
35:38let me see if I can do a quick show and tell here.
35:51Head wraps for women, African head wraps, Turban head wraps.
35:55I'll try to use these exact terms in my SEO title
35:59or SEO description, or in my category page,
36:03because this is exactly what people are searching for.
36:05So if I carried African head wraps, for example,
36:09I'd probably want to optimize for this.
36:14Let's see.
36:22Okay, yeah.
36:24So here you can see like different terms
36:27that people are searching for around scarves.
36:30There's infinity scarf, bashmina scarf,
36:33blanket scarf.
36:36If your products match any of this,
36:38then you'd want to take that exact keyword
36:41and make sure that you're optimizing
36:42your product pages for it.
36:44And if you have a ton of products,
36:46it's probably going to be different.
36:48Another example I can think of is wigs.
36:54Women wear wigs.
37:03Okay, so there's glue-less, there's lace front,
37:07there's human hair wigs for black women,
37:09there's cheap, there's u-parts.
37:11Like whatever the keyword is,
37:13as it's related to your business,
37:14again, make sure that the way I've described
37:17optimizing an article,
37:18make sure you're optimizing the product description
37:20that same way for it.
37:22So original content, optimizing your,
37:25original product descriptions, my bad,
37:28optimizing your SEO title.
37:30And there's another thing
37:32that I'm kind of losing track of right now,
37:35but if I remember in the course of the presentation,
37:40I will come back to it.
37:47Hey.
37:51Okay, also remember to structure your story
37:54or products with H2s
37:56and link strategically to internal content.
38:01So I, if we had this article on,
38:04would you read our questions for couples?
38:06And we have, say, another article
38:10on six questions to fall in love.
38:12We're adding a link here.
38:14It's great for whoever's reading the article
38:16to see that we have additional content around this,
38:19but it's also great for Google
38:21because when the Google bots crawl your content,
38:24they also crawl these links.
38:26And now they know that you have additional content
38:28on this same topic
38:29and they're all related.
38:31This is especially important
38:33because if you start to perform well for,
38:37let's say this article, for example,
38:39if you start to perform well for this,
38:42then because Google is crawling all of these links,
38:46if there's any related theme here,
38:50those start to perform well as well
38:53because the signals get transferred.
38:55And on that note,
38:56I just remembered what I was going to say
38:59in terms of e-commerce content.
39:02The third tip is to make sure
39:05that you have Google My Business set up.
39:10This doesn't work for everyone.
39:12It works for people that have shops
39:14or people that sell products.
39:16So if you've ever searched for Chinese food near me,
39:25the reason why I can see all of these results here
39:29is because they have Google My Business set up.
39:32So that helps you get traffic
39:35and just like leads and buyers
39:37from people that are in your area.
39:40I know I had a client once I worked with
39:43that was selling CBD
39:45and he had Google My Business set up
39:47and he would get a ton of calls
39:49from people in the area
39:50just trying to purchase that product.
39:52So that's one thing that helps.
39:55If you sell online,
39:56you can also list your products on,
40:00let's see actually,
40:02can also list your products on Google My Business.
40:05And then when Google,
40:08okay, hold on.
40:13Yeah, so when you list your products there,
40:16you have the potential of coming up in this kind of bar
40:21that populates when people search for products.
40:24So that's just one thing to keep in mind.
40:31Okay, the only,
40:37scratch that.
40:39Optimizing your article is like one part of it,
40:43but you also need to optimize your images.
40:46And that's because optimized images
40:49can drive traffic to your page.
40:51And it's also great for screen readers.
40:53And by that, I mean,
40:56there are people that are not able to see
40:59what's written on your site
41:01or they might have a disability
41:04and they use screen readers to read the content.
41:07If your image is optimized,
41:09and we'll get to that in a second,
41:13you're providing information
41:14that allows the screen readers to read
41:16or describe what's in the image.
41:18And Google loves accessibility.
41:21So that's one thing to note.
41:26Here is a quick example.
41:28I don't know why I keep using Beyonce.
41:30I'm actually not part of the Beehive,
41:32but this is working today.
41:36Let's say I was Googling Beyonce tour outfits,
41:41and I wanted to see all the pictures.
41:42So I'm looking at pictures here.
41:45This picture is from an article
41:47that People Magazine created.
41:50If I click on this other picture,
41:51it's from an article that someone else created.
41:54I can decide just from looking at this picture
41:56to click on the article.
41:59And now I'm reading this article,
42:01not because, like, if you look at the first page,
42:04this site, Uproxx,
42:07I'm pretty sure it's not ranking at all.
42:10It's not even on the first page,
42:12but the image appeared here because it was optimized.
42:15And suddenly I'm visiting the website because of that.
42:19So that's, like, whatever you can leverage,
42:23make sure you're leveraging that.
42:26There are two cells that are very important for you
42:31to fill out when you're optimizing your image.
42:35So one is the alt text, one is the title,
42:38and also the caption to give credits
42:40to whoever owns that image.
42:42The alt text should describe the image
42:44because that's what the screen readers use.
42:46And then the title should mirror your article title.
42:50So this is a quick example.
42:52This article had something to do with,
42:54it was actually called non-traditional engagement rings.
42:59Non-traditional engagement rings
43:00was the actual keyword as well.
43:03The alt text here says a black man in a suit
43:06proposes to a woman with a non-traditional engagement ring.
43:10So it's basically describing this picture.
43:13And I was lucky enough to be able to fit the keyword
43:16in there, sometimes you may not be able to,
43:18but if you can, definitely do that.
43:21And then the title is called
43:22non-traditional engagement rings
43:25to match the title of the article.
43:30Don't make sure you're not naming your images like this.
43:33If you have an edit team or a creative team
43:36that creates photos for you,
43:39tell them to name the images,
43:42either descriptive of your article
43:44or descriptive of the actual image.
43:47But yeah, we shouldn't do things like this
43:49because it's kind of defeats the purpose
43:52and prevents us from showing up
43:55where we should ordinarily show up.
44:00Does anyone have any questions on images,
44:05optimizing images?
44:10No, okay.
44:12Okay.
44:15All right, I wanted to show you guys
44:17an example of a result we've gotten from SEO.
44:20So it's not like I'm telling you all these amazing things
44:23and I'm not showing you how exactly it works.
44:26I pulled this article from Travel Noir,
44:29one of Blavity's brands.
44:32If you Google the word lost ID before flights,
44:37Travel and Leisure comes up first
44:39and then Travel Noir comes up second for me.
44:41And when I looked at Google Search Console,
44:46I saw that for a period of three months,
44:50this article actually gave Travel Noir
44:52a total of 9,000 clicks.
44:55So that's like 3,000 clicks every month,
44:58which I think is about a hundred clicks per day.
45:00And that's just one article.
45:02So think about a site that publishes a ton of articles.
45:06If you're publishing a blog post,
45:09that publishes a ton of articles.
45:11If you're publishing a ton of SEO optimized articles,
45:15this number could easily,
45:17like this could be 9.3,000 times a hundred.
45:20It could easily skyrocket.
45:22And this is not to say
45:24that you shouldn't create trending content
45:26because there's space for trending content everywhere.
45:29We've also seen how you can use Google Trends for that,
45:33but there's also space for creating content
45:35that lives on Google for a very long time.
45:39So this was created three months ago.
45:41To this day, it's still bringing traffic.
45:44Towards the end of the year,
45:45it's probably still going to bring traffic.
45:46And it's just something that was,
45:48you know, it's a one and done effort
45:50or one and check back twice effort,
45:52as opposed to something that you just create once
45:55and it lasts for a week and it dies down.
45:58And then these are like examples of all the keywords
46:01that are driving traffic to that particular story.
46:06Well, on that note, that's all I have for everyone.
46:11If anyone has any further questions,
46:13I think I can take a second to answer and then.
46:22Okay.
46:24All right.
46:26Yeah, I'm going to hand this over to you.
46:29Yeah, absolutely.
46:30Thank you so much, Lily.
46:31I learned a lot.
46:32I was taking notes throughout the whole thing.
46:34I hope everyone that joined learned a lot.
46:37If you do have any questions,
46:38I'll hang back for a little bit.
46:40I'm happy to take any questions
46:42and can forward them over to Lily if I can't answer them.
46:46But this will close in about eight minutes.
46:48So feel free to throw any other questions
46:51you have in the QA.
46:52Otherwise, everyone have a great rest of your day.
46:54Lily, again, thank you so, so, so much.
46:56We really appreciate you.
46:58This was amazing.
46:59Yeah, thank you.
47:00Thanks, everybody.
47:02Bye.
47:03Bye.
47:12Elisha, I see your question on optimizing images.
47:14Do you recommend doing this on social?
47:17Yes, on all of your platforms, not just Google.
47:23If you notice, I think Lily, at one point,
47:25she did search someone's Instagram.
47:28I think that also pops up in Google.
47:30So definitely optimize for all of your platforms.
47:33This recording will be posted on the Blavity 360 website.
47:37So stay tuned for that.
47:39We will have other webinars coming up.
47:42Our next one next month will be all about e-commerce,
47:45actually, so we'll definitely keep everyone informed
47:49moving forward on all of this great content
47:51that we'll be sharing.