How to use offsite SEO to get people back to your website
Welcome to another exciting episode of "Process to Profitability." Today, I am thrilled to have Erin Ollila, an SEO website copywriter and the host of the "Top Copy to Me" podcast, joining me. In this episode, we dive deep into the fascinating world of offsite SEO and how it goes beyond just backlinks. Erin shares her insights on leveraging different platforms such as podcasts, YouTube, and more to drive traffic to your website. We also tackle the challenges of self-promotion and crafting an engaging about page. So grab your headphones, get ready to learn, and let's dive into the episode with Erin Ollila right now!
Timestamps:
[00:01:46] Connect with Erin
[00:04:18] How copywriting and design support each other
[00:07:52] What is offsite SEO?
[00:11:09] The importance of SEO for podcasters and other content creators
[00:14:22] Start building offsite SEO with the channels you have now
[00:17:50] How to work on your offsite SEO if you don't have a podcast
[00:22:04] How do we bring people back to our website when they find us?
[00:32:34] Make your website’s user experience simple and streamlined
[00:37:07] Connect with Erin
Key Topics:
Importance of optimizing websites for search results and conversions
Utilizing SEO for podcasting and creating various types of content
User navigation and clear calls to action on websites
The value of creating show notes and backlinks for guesting on podcasts
Guiding website visitors and addressing their psychographics and emotional temperament
Offsite SEO strategies beyond backlinks and attracting visitors from other platforms
Overcoming self-promotion struggles and effectively promoting oneself
Using podcasting to drive traffic and build SEO efforts.
Resources:
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: I'm so excited for you guys to listen to this episode with Erin Ollila. We are talking about offsite SEO, but it is such a fun conversation because she is a conversion and SEO copywriter. And I am a website designer. So we are kind of meeting in the middle to talk about these things and she explains it so well, so I know this is going to be super beneficial for everybody who's listening.
[00:00:27] This is going to cover anybody who has any type of business where you are having an online presence and how you get people from other places back to your website. And then what do you do with them once they get to your website? We talk specifically about podcasts and YouTube, both if you have your own show and if you are a guest, what you can do to build up that offsite SEO as well as why it's important to do so beyond just having backlinks, which is what most people think of. So it's a really in depth conversation. It's a lot of fun and I'm really excited for you to listen.
[00:01:09] Conversion copywriter, copy coach, wingwoman, wordslinger. No matter what you call her, Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform and even transform its intended audience. When she's not working with big brands and small businesses to marry strategy, storytelling, and SEO, you can find her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast, which we talk a bit about in this episode, or exploring Southeastern Massachusetts with her family and friends.
[00:01:37] Thanks for joining me, Erin.
[00:01:42] Erin Ollila: Thank you for having me. I appreciate your time and being here.
Connect with Erin
[00:01:46] Samantha Mabe: I would love if you would start off by telling us a little bit about what you do and how you got into doing that in your business.
[00:01:55] Erin Ollila: Sure. I am an SEO website copywriter and I am also the host of the Talk Copy to Me podcast.
[00:02:01] I actually went to college undergraduate and graduate for creative writing. So I was completely in the literary world. I do have a bachelor's in communications, but I never really thought that I would do this. Like I truly thought I was going to be on professor track, like wearing a like beret to school and speaking like in some fancy languages. I don't speak any language other than pig Latin and the most small amount of French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
[00:02:29] But one day I just really started caring a lot about why my business friends that I knew that had started their own companies were struggling. And I was like, 'Oh, I got you. Let's just rewrite your resume. Let's just work on your website.'
[00:02:41] And then I was like, I think I really like this. So I was lucky to get a great job way back in the early days of SEO, where I learned very well by people who were also taught very well.
[00:02:54] And since then, it's been like, something that just won't go away. I love trying to gamify the idea of like how to get found through search. And also then the key that a lot of people don't think about is what do you do when people find you? Like you have to do something and convert them, but it's so often forgotten. So those are my two big things I'm really obsessed about in my business.
[00:03:16] Samantha Mabe: When I do ask people about their websites, their biggest concerns are like SEO and getting people to their site and then actually converting people because it doesn't matter how many people land on your website if it isn't going to connect with them, then it doesn't really matter.
[00:03:31] Erin Ollila: I always hear from my web designer friends that like, 'Oh, I have these clients, and they have these goals', and then they'll talk to their clients about copywriting, and their clients are like, 'wait, that's not included, or what do you mean I have to do that?'
[00:03:43] The beauty of the website is definitely a huge part of conversion, but what are you going to say on those buttons that they're supposed to click? If it's just a rectangle on the page, like it's just a rectangle on the page.
[00:03:54] But copywriting so often gets overlooked in that manner. And I think it's a little sad. We all know what Nike's slogans are and what these things are about these big businesses.
[00:04:03] But when it comes down to our own businesses, The key really is attracting new people to your business and finding a way to make a connection with them so that they can either buy right then and there or just stay within your network and get to know more about you.
How copywriting and design support each other
[00:04:18] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and that's what I tell so many of my clients. They are like, okay, so do I have to write the copy? Are you going to write the copy? I'm like, I am not going to write it. You don't want me to write it.
[00:04:29] It's a bigger investment to work with a copywriter and a designer, but it's so much more worth it because they're getting both of those things together and they really build off of each other.
[00:04:38] Erin Ollila: And I see a lot of the times where people will piecemeal it. Either they'll have maybe a template they've purchased for design and they've worked with a copywriter or the opposite. They've worked with a designer and they've just thrown their best work as possible at the like words themselves and both are fine.
[00:04:53] Now I think the beauty of the situation that I'm in is I'm not a beginner anymore. Like I've been in business forever that I can look back and be like, 'Oh, you know how many shortcuts I could have taken?' And actually I should probably rephrase that because I don't love the idea of shortcuts. Actually, I love baby steps when it comes to growing in business.
[00:05:10] But what I mean is how many times that I let perfectionism stand in my own way when I could have just thrown up a template on my website, right? Because I knew there was like a change in my business, let's say.
[00:05:21] Or I could have just thrown up my own copy, which everyone, even though I'm a copywriter, copywriters hate writing their own copy. It's so hard. But I held myself back so many times from just wanting everything to be done perfectly.
[00:05:35] So if you are in the situation we just mentioned don't beat yourself up and don't not do it. Done is better than perfect, invest in whatever it is that you have the financial resources to invest in.
[00:05:45] We do not want you to go poor because you're hiring people like us in your business. We want you to make money because you're hiring people like us. I do think it's great to do both at once. And I think if you can't, then you just can't. You just figure it out and you update as you go. That's it.
[00:06:02] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that's what one of my Biz Besties talks about, just taking messy action. And you do it, you get it out there, and then you iterate based on what you've learned.
The right time to work with a copywriter or designer
[00:06:14] Samantha Mabe: I have worked with people who come to me and they're like, 'I'm going to start a business. Can you build my website?' And I'm like, 'you don't even know if you want to run a business. I don't want to charge you this much money. And then you decide that you regret it. I would much rather you like, try it out on your own, go to Canva and put something together and give it a little bit of time to make sure that it's going to work.' and then you can invest because then you're going to have all of that information.
[00:06:41] Erin Ollila: Yeah, a hundred percent.
[00:06:42] One of the questions I come up with when I'm doing discovery calls and I find clients in this situation is, what are your services or what are you offering? And there's usually a big question mark there. And I say that is like the key.
[00:06:53] Whenever anyone asks me like how do you know you're ready for a website or a website like rebrand? The key is how well do you know what it is you're trying to do with your website?
[00:07:03] Not all websites are really a super sales tool, but things like If you have a group program, how many how many weeks does it last? If you have a solo coaching experience, how many coaching sessions are within that container? And when you can't answer those questions, don't spend your money on a website.
[00:07:20] That's what's called procrastination where everyone wants to like do the pretty thing, do the fun thing, because they don't want to put in the like mental energy and anguish, again, copywriters hate writing their own copies, so I know where you're coming from. But they don't want to do that mental work of what am I offering? Like, how much is it? What would this experience be like? How can I make this the best experience for these potential clients?
[00:07:43] So if you find yourself in that situation, sit down and do the work of trying to figure that out and then hire someone.
[00:07:50] Samantha Mabe: That is great advice.
What is offsite SEO?
[00:07:52] Samantha Mabe: And today we're specifically talking about offsite SEO, which is not something that I do a lot of because obviously I'm doing the website. But what is offsite SEO for people who have heard, ' okay, I need to show up on Google and I need SEO.' But what is this additional thing you have to do?
[00:08:12] Erin Ollila: It's so funny you say that cause I don't really see it as additional. It is additional work in some ways, but in other ways, we're so often already doing this work that it feels in a sense a little less intentional than creating the perfect keywords for your main pages of your website.
[00:08:29] So with offsite SEO, it's really just what type of SEO efforts are you putting in anywhere that's not your website? And I don't mean to oversimplify that. Here's an easy way to understand it. When you go to Pinterest or you go to YouTube or you go to a podcast player and you enter a search term. That's offsite SEO.
[00:08:52] If they're putting in, for example, a phrase like website design that would potentially lead them to your podcast, what you just did was your SEO. Whether you intentionally did the SEO work or not, is what's drawing those people to your site.
[00:09:08] Just to simplify, so I don't go too deep, too quickly, offsite SEO is all of the ways that people can find you that isn't your website, but may lead back to your website later.
[00:09:20] Because a lot of people will think about offsite SEO as just backlinks. And I think that's why I started to really care so much about talking about the other types of SEO.
[00:09:29] A backlink, if you're not familiar with what that is, is when one website links to another website. So in this case, it would be like Samantha's had a link on her website that linked over to my website, Erin's website. Backlinks are great. They're a powerful SEO tool, but what's happened in the past decade plus of backlinks is they've become this semi shady thing where there's a lot of easy ways to have like bad SEO practices in order to get backlinks. So they're not bad. Backlinks are incredible, but they're harder to get naturally or organically.
[00:10:04] I would love Forbes to start linking people to my website all the time, or Entrepreneur to start linking people to my website all the time. But in order to do that, I would either have to write an article for them, or someone who did write for them would have to quote me. And not just quote me, but they would then have to link to my page through that quote. So it's harder.
[00:10:26] But I think when we hear offsite, that's what all people think about is just linking and it's not. It's all the different ways you can get people in your network that gets initiated from somewhere that's not your website.
[00:10:39] Samantha Mabe: That makes a lot of sense.
[00:10:40] It could be you are a guest on somebody's podcast and their show notes linked to your website, but it could also be they listen to the episode and then they go find you on Instagram because they've searched for this.
[00:10:51] So it's really more of this bigger pool that you're getting into where you're not trying to get somebody to specifically find your business when they search for websites in a podcast player, but you want to show up and give them enough value that they're interested in learning more.
The importance of SEO for podcasters and other content creators
[00:11:09] Erin Ollila: Yeah, and take like podcasting for example, like we, I always every time I meet a new podcaster, I just want to like shake them and be like, are you doing SEO? Because we are ripe with content.
[00:11:20] When people think of content, at least maybe in my world, because of copywriting, when I say the word content, they're like, 'oh gosh, I never want to write another blog a day in my life.'
[00:11:29] Here's the thing when it comes to SEO in general. When it comes to websites, I always say, the more pieces of content you have, it's like having more windows and doors on your house. It's an entryway. So if you only have a five page website with zero other pages, you have five ways people can find you.
[00:11:48] If you have blogs, case studies, hidden pages, testimonial pages, all of the additional stuff, every single one of those pages are more ways that people can enter into your world.
Content creation ties in with offsite SEO
[00:11:59] Erin Ollila: Now let's go back to podcasting again, for a second, all that blogging and stuff, especially before AI, it just seems so overwhelming. But now all podcasts, every single audio piece that you produce and then gets put in an audio player, that is one piece of content.
[00:12:15] If you go ahead and do show notes, you now have two pieces of content. Many people do small blogs based on the episodes that would link to the show notes that is three pieces of content. That's huge. And it all comes from one effort, one interview or one solo recording, and of those three, you can have different keywords too, to attract the right people.
[00:12:39] And again, when I say these things, I do give them that slant back to a website, but it's not just that. Because every time someone comes into a podcast player and searches for something, they don't have to go back to your website.
[00:12:52] You have your own home base within Apple Podcasts, within Spotify Podcasts, and if they're searching for something like copywriting, for example, and they find my show, if they press follow, that is just as strong as them coming to check out my website, if not stronger, because every week, it's going to go into their feed. They don't have to search for it. Every single week, and eventually, they're gonna hear me, and they're gonna be like, 'me and Erin are friends!' And they will come to my website and hire me. Or they'll hear a commercial I put on my show. Or an offer that I share, that I tell them 'Hey, you wanna work together? Let's do this!' And they'll take that step.
[00:13:29] It isn't just the show notes, it isn't just the blog post, it's the actual audio. Or on YouTube, it's the actual video. Or on Pinterest, where you're just pinning images, it's the images that can go back to one piece of content, but maybe you have eight different pins for that one blog post, or that one video show, whatever it is.
[00:13:50] It's actually if you create content, you don't have to just have this one thing that works for you. If you're doing these efforts on Pinterest, on YouTube, on social even because Instagram has made a big deal about wanting to be more SEO friendly, and they are doing things to change how people search on the platform.
[00:14:09] So if we're using the best practices of being strategic about the phrases that we use, we're going to get the benefits that other people are not getting.
Start building offsite SEO with the channels you have now
[00:14:22] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and it always helps. The further back you've been doing it, the more it helps, too, because then you've got all of that history there. If somebody has a podcast or a YouTube show start doing it now, and don't wait until you think, 'okay, I've got time to do it.' Like a little bit of effort can go a long way.
[00:14:40] Erin Ollila: And the beauty of having content already, and this is where another thing where I'm like, 'Oh, podcasters. I just want to be your friend.' Because let's say you have 50 shows, but you've done zero SEO effort to them. That's 50 doors that you can just touch a little bit to introduce people to your world.
[00:14:58] You already wrote the podcast description, maybe the show notes if you did that too. And if you didn't do any SEO work, just hop on a free tool like Ubersuggest and put in the theme of the show.
[00:15:09] Like in this case, offsite SEO, if I went to Ubersuggest and I put in offsite SEO, it would spit out a bunch of potential keywords for me. Pick one. You don't even have to be too strategic. Just pick one, any of them, and then insert that into the title. Insert that into the body of either the podcast description or the actual show notes on your website. And that's it. And meta description, you should do that as well.
[00:15:34] But think about how little, low effort that was. If you do two episodes every week, sure it will take you a little while, but that's all content you don't have to create. It's already done. Throwing a couple words in there and you'll attract more people.
[00:15:50] So I love the idea of, if you haven't started yet, are you behind? No, if you have content, you're ahead. You just don't know that you're ahead at this point because you feel behind.
Offsite SEO compliments your website design investment
[00:16:02] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that's what I tell so many of my clients. A, they generally have very short websites and I'm like, let's actually explain what you're doing here so you get more SEO on the site.
[00:16:12] But then create content, create a podcast, create a blog, start guest posting places, get your name out there so it's recognized, but also build that SEO so that people are going to come back to your website, come to your social media. You're going to show up in their podcast player every week.
[00:16:30] And that is what's going to drive more traffic than just having one simple website that looks really nice, but nobody ever sees it.
[00:16:39] Erin Ollila: Yeah. Agreed. Especially with the amount of money that goes into producing a pretty strategic and beautifully designed website. I think a lot of people have the misconception that like, once their website's done, once it's launched, like they're good to go. That's the farthest thing from the truth. Once the website's launched, you're at a great starting place.
[00:16:58] And I think this is why I care about offsite SEO. I'm not trying to encourage everyone to write a million blog posts a week. If anything, I want you all to just spend quality time with your friends and family. That's it!
[00:17:10] But, once you have your site launched, make use of it, right? It could, like you mentioned, be a guest on a podcast. If you're a guest on someone's podcast and you link back to your website, even if you don't have all those blogs, that's a backlink. That's something that's getting you traffic, right? If you're a guest on a YouTube show, let's say, and they allow you to maybe have a lead magnet or an offer, there's another door that enters into your business.
[00:17:39] But just launching and keeping your fingers crossed because, you have a wonderful product that has been created for you, it's just not enough in the way that we run our business these days.
How to work on your offsite SEO if you don't have a podcast
[00:17:50] Samantha Mabe: So if somebody doesn't have their own podcast or their own YouTube show, how can they use that to get people back to their own website?
[00:18:01] We've talked about if you have a podcast, you should go in there, you should use those keywords, but what if they're just being a guest for somebody else?
[00:18:08] Erin Ollila: Yeah I think that there's 2 different routes that you can take if you are easily guesting on podcasts and YouTube shows, even Instagram shows now or LinkedIn.
[00:18:17] So any place that you're being a guest, and you're able to do it frequently, often, and for good shows, you can take the easy way out and just allow for them to give you the backlinks, right?
[00:18:30] If you aren't able to have 400 interviews a month and you want to make the most of the time that you have, I suggest doing your own version of show notes on your website for the shows that you were a guest on. You do not need to go crazy. You do not need to put the whole transcripts in there. But something that would be a very easy option for you is a one to three paragraph introduction to the topic. Why that show? Why that topic? Why do you care about it? Then you have a few bullet points so people you can entice them to want to go and listen. And then you have a conclusion.
[00:19:04] When you do that, one, there's that piece of content, there's that door I talked about, but two, now you're giving a backlink to the podcast host, which makes them think a lot more fondly of you in their eyes because you're promoting their business, their podcast, and they're going to be a lot more willing to share you with their friends if you can create that content yourself.
[00:19:25] You could definitely take the easy way and do backlinks only. There's nothing wrong with that. I think that's what the majority of people will do. But if you don't have any other content form and you want to have more doors to your business, try the case of doing your own show notes or your own blog post.
[00:19:41] One quick thing as an aside, if you just do a blog post, you don't even have to make a big deal about the podcast. Just mention them once or twice, right? And make the blog post about the topic. Like why is offsite SEO important? Intro, conclusion, couple supporting paragraphs. And then maybe in one of those supporting paragraphs, that's when you say, Oh, when I was a guest on the process to profit profitability podcast, I mentioned X, Y, Z, and link over to their podcast.
[00:20:10] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I love. After I've guested it on somebody's podcast and it comes out to get the transcript and just make notes of the things that I said and quotes, because people are going to ask questions in different ways and draw different things out of you that you could always use as content that's really helpful that you're talking about the same topic, sure. But you're talking about it in a different way. And then that's another way you could use that in like a blog post is this is how I addressed it in this show, or these are these examples that I use that might be different from other places that I've spoken about this.
[00:20:47] Erin Ollila: One of my professors made this big point of the idea of recording yourself instead of sitting at the computer because you're actually using different parts of your brain.
[00:20:54] And it's something I do all of the time with my clients. When we first start working together, they do get a somewhat traditional questionnaire so that way I don't have to spend an extra hour and a half on them on the phone being like, who are your competitors? Why did you decide to do this website? What would you like X, Y, and Z page to be like? So once I have that, I can then start from there to be able to learn from them.
[00:21:17] But on the call, when I am interviewing them, I'm asking them some of the same questions. You mentioned you liked X, Y, and Z's website and their about page specifically. What about the about page was so interesting? Or you mentioned you got into this industry for this reason. Why? And they say it differently and sometimes the way that they say it, that's the tone of voice.
[00:21:41] That's all of those conversion copywriting factors that play so heavily into building relationships with unknown leads that come to our website from all of these various SEO efforts that we're doing.
[00:21:53] The efforts you put into other people's content can really benefit you, because you might hear yourself saying it in a way that you wouldn't describe it if you sat down to a computer.
How do we bring people back to our website when they find us?
[00:22:04] Samantha Mabe: When somebody discovers you in their podcast player or on YouTube, how do we get them back to our website to take that next step? Because, obviously, there's value in being on the show, but eventually, we want them to come into our orbit. How do we think about doing that in a way that is effective and doesn't feel like, you're just a commercial for yourself.
[00:22:27] Erin Ollila: So here's where it's tricky because the way that I was gonna answer before you ended that was to say like we all need to get a lot more used to actually talking about ourself and boasting.
Get used to sharing about yourself and your work
[00:22:36] Erin Ollila: I find that to be a huge problem for my clients. I work with extremely successful people. And then we talk about the about page and they'll be like, Oh, you could just write that I live in San Diego and I love peanuts as my favorite snack. And then, though, in conversation later, I'll find out they won these extremely prestigious awards. Or not only do they have their PhD and all the other alphabet letters after their name, but they also formed a university, or some of these something crazy and abnormal.
[00:23:05] And I'm like, you just told me you wanted to write about your love of peanuts. How did you not bring up these things that are relevant to your business? And it's because we're not used to proving how wonderful we are.
[00:23:20] And it's very hard to do that because we're all taught, especially as females, we're all taught to be modest and kind and welcoming and make other people comfortable and that doesn't align really well with talking about yourself.
[00:23:36] When I introduced myself, I said that I was the host of the Talk Copy to Me podcast. That's one way to do it. Again, it was accidental, but if you do that, and right now you're all listening in a podcast player for the most part, and if you like this episode, you might just say, 'Oh, let me go check out our show quick', right?
[00:23:52] Another way to do that is podcasters tend to ask at the end of an episode ' is there any way you'd like our guests to find you?' Again, what I usually say is ' just listen to my podcast you're done with this episode.' but, that's where you do the heavy hitting of: I have a great lead magnet, it's a quiz, it's gonna be able to help you figure out X, Y, and Z. Or, oh, I actually did a really great video interview on this YouTube channel, please go check it out. Or, my blog is so helpful for this.
[00:24:21] That's the first answer. Just get used to actually boasting. And I know that it's a slippery slope of what's too much, what's not enough. And honestly, you just have to keep trying, and then you'll figure that out.
Make sure to provide links to your website
[00:24:34] Erin Ollila: And then, as for the other ways, some of the simple ways are just providing links, right? So even if you are on a podcast or a YouTube channel or a social channel, and they don't ask you for your links outright, ask the host, ask the the YouTube channel owner, say, 'Hey, would you be willing to have a link back to my website? Even if it's just in the description or the show notes? Whatever works for you. I'm really trying to build up my SEO efforts.'
[00:25:02] So basically it's calling it out yourself, like vocally, or it's asking for it to be written down. I feel like that's the easy answer here.
[00:25:12] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. And you made a good point that there's a difference between self promotion and telling people, okay, we just talked about this topic. I've got a really good podcast episode or useful blog on it for you to learn more and going into an entire infomercial about everything that you have to offer that people are just gonna be like, okay I don't need all of that.
[00:25:31] Erin Ollila: And I think something else that sticks out to is sometimes people are just so passionate about their topic that they don't even think to talk about themselves. So it's oh we're talking about offsite SEO and I'm giving you these tips and tricks, and I'm so excited about it.
[00:25:43] If there is something I can say that could help you and bring you into my orbit, like a lead magnet or something, it's important to do that. Because it's not necessarily that you're anxious about boasting, or you're very modest, or you're anxious about that. It could just be you're very excited about what it is that you're talking about that you forget to do it.
[00:26:03] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and you're right to that most podcast hosts will ask you for those links and if you are droning on and giving people not relevant information that they'll cut it out. We're not going to let you go on for 15 minutes about where people can find you on the Internet. There's these guardrails in place anyway, so you just have to show up.
[00:26:22] And I also loved there that when you were talking about where you send people, you make sure it's relevant for the topic and not just, 'I'm going to send everybody to Instagram or I'm going to send everybody to my website.' Make sure that it makes sense for the audience and the topic so that they're more likely to go and follow or check you out or sign up.
Distribute the links to share to other pages of your website
[00:26:42] Erin Ollila: Yeah, from an SEO perspective too, if you're using a tool like Ubersuggest you might find if you're doing one of those like site analyzers is you might get something that says, ' no inbound links.' and it might say 18 pages.
[00:26:56] That's because there is nothing linking to those pages. Is this a huge SEO thing? Not necessarily. It's not gonna make or break whether you land on the first page of Google or not. But there is a good reason why you want to distribute links, and that's to boost those things.
[00:27:13] If I go on a show and I start talking about copywriting specifically, what goes on the pages of your website, I know I have four really strong podcast episodes that I love, and I'm always telling people like, 'here's what you do for your about page, just listen to the episode. I say everything you need to know. Don't want to listen? Go read the show notes.' I send those four episodes and that's it, I don't send them to my homepage. I don't send it to my services page because those are so easy.
[00:27:38] Everyone just puts their homepage. But if you can distribute it throughout the site, especially distributing it, like you mentioned, in a way that's helpful because the topic is like very similar, that's actually a stronger effort, I would say.
[00:27:53] Samantha Mabe: And it makes a ton of sense too if you are on a podcast. Send them to another podcast episode, whether it's your podcast, which I'm sure is ideal, but on somebody else's show that can build on it. Because they're already in that player.
[00:28:07] Podcast people are podcast people and YouTube people are YouTube people, so it makes sense to keep them in that same medium when you are sending them somewhere.
[00:28:18] Erin Ollila: Yeah.
Make sure your website is ready for traffic
[00:28:20] Samantha Mabe: What are some of the ways like you're sending people back to your website, whether that's to a specific post or your homepage or whatever? How do we make sure our website is ready for that traffic?
[00:28:31] Erin Ollila: Yeah, that's a great question. This is 1 thing I think people forget. It's what I mentioned earlier. The idea of: what do you do after you get them to your website? That's where all of the the stop signs come in, right?
[00:28:42] My example of sending people to your home page. You're on a podcast, you're on a YouTube show, they let you submit a link to be in the description, and it's your home page.
[00:28:51] And they get there, and your hero section says Welcome to our site! And then they scroll down and the first thing they see after that are the three services, like three ways to purchase from you. And then they keep scrolling and then it's like a newsletter. And there's nothing that allows them to self identify that they're in the right place.
[00:29:09] Before I go too far down this route, the quick thing to say is make sure that wherever you send them allows them to be able to automatically say, oh, this is what I want.
[00:29:20] So if it were one of those episodes on the about page, like I mentioned before, as soon as they click on that page, they can say, great, it's the about page blog she told us about. Or great, here's the link to sign up for the newsletter.
[00:29:34] So that's the easy part, allowing them to make sure that they're in the right spot. Because we have less than three seconds to convince people to continue what they're doing. So they may click over, but if they have to make any decisions, if they have to click around and go in different places, they're not putting in the effort.
[00:29:51] When it comes to content, every single person, me, you, everyone who's listening, cares about this one thing. What's in it for me, right? There's too much content in the world, and I know, I've created a ton of it. There's too much content.
[00:30:07] We're asked to make so many decisions a day, as business owners and as just normal humans. So we want to make the process of moving from the click into that new spot as seamless as possible.
[00:30:21] And to just expand a little bit further when I say allow them to self identify they're in the right place, the next thing that you have to do is let them know what's in it for them So if it's a home page, that hero section right at the top you want to make clear what the entire website's about or what's the big offer? What do you have for them?
[00:30:39] Then when you scroll down, there are formulas that are helpful to get people to psychologically make decisions to move forward and trusting you and. It doesn't have to be a pain point. Pain points and easy one for us to think of .It could also be like a desire or an aspiration, right?
[00:30:58] So there's two different roads you can travel when it comes to acknowledging like the psychographics and the emotional temperament of the people coming to your website, and it doesn't have to be hard.
[00:31:11] So I would say it's let them land on your site, and then just present them with the right information. And not to sound nebulous, the right information is information that is clear. If you're a copywriter, don't call yourself a word unicorn. That makes zero sense because one, unicorns don't exist. And two, if they did, what would they do with words if they did? Don't be clever. Clever never works. Be clear, say, 'Hey, I'm a copywriter and I do this type of copywriting and I really care about these types of clients.' it can be that simple.
[00:31:47] So once someone clicks that link from whatever offsite channel, be it social, be it audio or video platforms, and they land, all they want to do is know that they're in the right place and that you actually understand where they're at. And it's as simple as that.
[00:32:04] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that's so helpful.
[00:32:06] And I feel like I have seen so many websites that it's welcome to my website, or it's just the business name as the headline. And I'm like, this is not helping you. You can be the top expert in your field. But if you are not connecting with people, they're just gonna, they're gonna leave and go find somebody else because we don't have the time. We don't have the patience to dig in there and figure out what it is you do. And if we want to work with you.
Make the user experience simple and streamlined
[00:32:34] Erin Ollila: And we have so many choices, right? There are so many potential people we could hire for these things. So if someone has to think 1. 5 seconds, they're just going to click to the next one.
[00:32:47] And I think when we talk about conversion, while I mentioned the basics of as soon as someone gets there, the key though, is what we ask them to do. Seems silly, but user navigation is something that nobody talks about and I'm always like, why? It's so important. How many clicks does it take to get around your website, right?
[00:33:06] We want to make sure every page of a website has a clear call to action. Some may have multiple. I hate saying that because I don't want people to go and put like 44 calls of action on their page.
[00:33:18] We talked earlier about during discovery calls, I asked people like, what do you want your website to do? That's the biggest question. Do you want them to book a discovery call? In some phases of business, absolutely. That's like the number one thing. If you're too busy, you don't want to do that though. You want them to maybe fill out an application or maybe just buy the service directly on the page.
[00:33:40] Whatever it is, we need to understand that. So that if they're on the homepage, we don't send them on a wild goose chase to the about page, to the secondary services page, to the main services page, and then to the contact and then, Oh, wait. The contact form's not done because now they have to fill out that application, right? That's frustrating. People are going to be like, if it's that hard to get in touch with you, imagine how hard it's going to be to work with you.
[00:34:05] So user navigation is really like, where do they need to go? Maybe it's just the contact page. Maybe it's just the services page where they can purchase. So where do they need to go, how you can get them there as quickly as possible, and how you can encourage them to do those things. Because it's not just throw a button on the page and expect that people will click like you have to explain what the next step is.
[00:34:33] On the homepage, a lot of especially smaller service based businesses, coaches, things like that, they'll have a section that's like a mini about them section. I do. So it's ' Hi, I'm Erin. I'm an SEO copywriter. Here's the one paragraph you need to know about me. There's a button that says, come to my about page.' I'm not saying everyone needs this because they totally don't, but in that case, it's very clear that the button they press right there will give them more information about me. It's not going to give them the services.
[00:35:03] So it's just those little teeny things that we often overlook where that causes the most possible chance for a conversion.
[00:35:13] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And so many of my clients are in therapy and wellness so they're working with people who need help right away. They are not going to click around on your website and figure stuff out.
[00:35:25] They want to land, see, okay, this is the right place. What is the easiest possible way for me to get in touch with this person and get on their calendar and get the help that I need?
[00:35:36] And so if we can make that simpler for people, then we're benefiting our business because we can bring in more clients, but we're also benefiting our clients because we're making it super simple for them to get a solution.
[00:35:50] Erin Ollila: Yeah, 100 percent and sometimes people ask me, which it didn't seem relevant to this conversation, but I think it is very relevant.
[00:35:56] If I have a business just like that, like a therapist, how do I let people know I'm still in business? How many times a year do I have to change my website? Do I have to have new pictures done? Change the footer that says the year in it, right? Copyright 2023. That's it! Because if you've done that, at least they know that you're still in practice. You don't have to do weekly updates on a blog. You don't have to do anything like that. But you do want people to know that you're still practicing. And you can do that as simply as just making sure that the footer of your website is updated.
[00:36:28] Because the more time we spend dawdling on our website, the less time we spend doing our actual business.
[00:36:34] Samantha Mabe: Yes, and I have been to websites that are like 2001 and I'm like, 'oh, so are you even gonna get back to this contact form?'
[00:36:44] Erin Ollila: And people do wonder that. We just got some trees taken down and I remember putting in contact form forms and never hearing from people and you're like, ' I don't know. I'm trying here.' Like how many people do you reach out to at once to hope that one of those people get back to you?
[00:36:57] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. All right, thank you so much. This was so fun to talk about and interesting. And I always love talking with like copywriters 'cause we do complimentary things.
Connect with Erin
[00:37:07] Samantha Mabe: I'd love to wrap up and have you just tell people where they can find you and connect with you online. Do the offsite SEO in real life.
[00:37:17] We're going to make this easy like we said earlier in the conversation. Just come on, click over to my podcast. Even if you want to stay and listen to a couple of more of the Process to Profitability shows, listen.
[00:37:26] And then when you're done, head over to the Talk Copy to me podcast. When you're there, there's going to be a billion links for my name, at least. So you'll find me.
[00:37:34] And the other thing is, if you're interested in SEO, one way I always joke to people about the benefit of it, now, I have a tricky last name, it's O L I L A, it's Olila, and a lot of the times, especially audio things, like podcast guesting, people are like, 'oh, I'm never gonna find her website.'
[00:37:50] Here's the thing, friends. Google and I are besties. You could type anything in for my last name. Someone told me that they typed Erin Gorilla because they just wanted to see if it would work. And it did.
[00:38:02] That's the beauty of why SEO is so important. People don't care about it. It's like how we treat our bodies, let's say. Nobody cares until you're in a situation where you have to care, or you're like, 'Oh, I wish I had done that so long ago.' So putting in the effort will allow it to work for you into the future. So that if you have a tricky to say or spell last name, Google's just, ' I got you boo, like I'll send people your way.'
[00:38:25] Well, we will link to that in the show notes as well so everybody can learn more about this and we'll have some more episodes coming up where we're talking about just copywriting and how to make it work better. So I'm excited for that whole piece to come together, to get beyond just like pretty words and make your whole website work for you.
