Bridget Willard | SaaS Marketing Agency

Author: Bridget Willard

  • Small Business Owners — Are You Looking For Opportunities to Learn?

    If you’re not learning, you can’t grow your business. Heck, you may not even be able to maintain it.

    In my professional career, I’ve come across peers and clients who don’t need to read a book because “they already know it.” They don’t go to sessions at a conference on SaaS Marketing because they “already know it.” They don’t ask people questions at networking meetings because “they already have a marketer in their BNI group.”

    Sadly, these scenarios are not made up.

    Yes, Business Owners Still Need to Learn

    It’s impossible to know everything so you must keep learning. You can learn how to do something better. You can ask yourself why you’re operating a certain way. Is that reason still applicable?

    Learning includes customer insights. These insights come when you ask questions. For example, though this video is from January 28, today is April 1. I’m in a Residence Inn in St. Louis. There is no coffee pot in this room. The coffee maker is here, but not the pot. 

    If I mention it to the front desk, I’m predicting one of two reactions: a) she’s just a Karen (GenX, short hair, likes to complain) or b) how did we miss that? Ain’t no thing since I brought Suiss Mocha instant coffee – just in case. Thankfully, there is a microwave in the building.

    So, here I am as a customer. How can I learn from that?

    Business Owners are Customers Themselves

    Yes, I’m a business owner. Though I don’t have employees (I have a couple of vendors), I can still learn from every experience – especially those when I am a customer.  

    In the case of the coffee pot, I know I just can’t even with telling the front desk. Why? I’m tired. It’s not my job to tell the front desk to check rooms before they’re available. And maybe they do. But the person who does it, skipped room 304. Who knows? I just don’t want the friction today. You know?

    But if I were here for business (not moving 1,550 miles away), I would tell them.

    Where is the insight from Coffee Pot Gate? Not every customer will give you insight. They won’t all tweet. They won’t all complain. (And, are complaints really just to bust your ass? Probably not.)

    What makes you loyal to a brand? That’s another question that business owners can learn as customers themselves. What do you like about going to Starbucks? How does it make you feel when you get your T.J. Maxx $10 Rewards Certificate? 

    Business Owners Can Learn As Employees

    Recently, I’ve taken a part-time job at T.J. Maxx. Firstly, to have extra money to pay debt faster. Secondly, for travel and fun money. Thirdly, to get out of the house (single lady with a cat works alone, hello). Fourthly, because my client work dropped significantly Sept-Dec 2022. That’s another sad story. 

    I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve learned being an employee again – especially in retail. I’ve learned that 21-25 year-olds have work ethic and are some of the best managers I’ve ever had. I’ve learned that there are career opportunities in retail. 

    I’ve learned about systems and processes and checklists – stuff that I “already know.” But it makes me think. What should I do every night, every week, and every quarter? How can I reward loyal members with exclusive members-only events three times a year? It’s more than just emailing people. I’ve learned that even when the TJX Rewards Card emails members, they don’t necessarily read or remember information.

    I’ve been reinforced that looking people in the eye is valuable. 

    I’ve been reinforced that asking people questions is never a bad idea.

    I’ve been reinforced that there is always something positive you can say to everyone.

    Does a smile or a laugh really make that much of a difference in someone’s work day?

    Spoiler alert: it does.

    Video Highlights

    00:24 Do you learn by asking questions?

    01:31 Empathy only works if you do the work.

    02:17 Are you teachable?

    03:22 You can learn from what not to do.

    04:10 Don’t pass on information you “already know.”

    Raw Transcript 

    (00:01):

    Hey, YouTube. I love my hair, but it’s driving me banana pants. And I thought I would come to you and do a little video about something I get asked about a lot, or actually something I encounter a lot, and that is being unteachable.

    (00:24):

    So I like to ask people, uh, questions because that’s the best way to learn about them. And sometimes I’m a little flabbergasted at how close-minded people are. Now, I knew this because I was, um, a teacher and sometimes when you’re tutoring people and you’re teaching them about math or whatever, then it’s really easy for them to get unfocused and decide they already. They are so frustrated, they’ve already closed their mind. There’s nothing they can possibly learn. You know, there’s nothing they can possibly learn. And that puts you in a really precarious position because as a business owner or somebody who wants to advance in your career, the most important thing you can do is have an open mind and to think about things in a different way, to experience things, um, new of the way your customers are, um, experiencing them. Try to put yourselves in their shoes.

    (01:31):

    We talk a lot about empathy lately, but that means going through those exercises. What is it like downloading an app without the wifi? What is it like signing up on a form on your website? Does it work for everyone? Are you asking when people, are you asking someone who’s never used your, your website to um, tell you what you do?

    (01:57):

    You know, is for me, the third time I got, somebody asked me if I specialized in marketing for bars and pubs, I was like, okay, I have to change this language. Right? Because that was my analogy and I love that page cuz it was clever and witty and fun, but it’s too disguised, right?

    (02:17):

    So are you teachable? Are you able to take in information from other people through your experiences and sort of apply them to a) what you, what you are doing correctly? There is a huge value in understanding and validating and, um, and reengaging the knowledge you have. We call that reinforced learning and it is so valuable. Another reason is what you shouldn’t do.

    (02:52):

    Remember that show What Not To Wear? Now, I know they have new versions of it, but Trinity Woodall who, uh, if you’ve seen me, me on Facebook or whatever, I’m obsessed with her. I’ve, I’ve just, I’ve thought she’s awesome forever. But she used to have this show, uh, called What Not To Wear and explained why things aren’t working right. So there’s a lot of people, we get stuck in our ruts and stuck with what our, what we’re wearing without thinking about the utility of what we’re trying to achieve. So it’s being open for that.

    (03:22):

    So sometimes you can learn what not to do, you know? Um, are you in a coffee shop and, uh, somebody takes your order and then you’re waiting for them to make the order before you pay? That is inefficient. I’m not sure why anybody does that. But, um, it happens a lot. It happens a lot in Door County. Um, if you’re listening to this and you’re offended, I’m sorry. <Laugh>. Um, but the, that’s the reality. The reality is why are you doing it this way? And it could be that there is a unique part of the culture that I’m misunderstanding. But to me, coming from California and then San Antonio, it makes zero sense.

    (04:10):

    Um, so I try to look at every client and every experience I’m having as what, what reinforced learning is there? What should I not do? What insights am I getting on processes or ideas on, oh, this is how this person is doing it? I wonder if I could do that? If I wonder if I could learn from this thing that I’m liking. 

    I’m noticing that I like this thing, this experience, this shop. 

    What of that can I bring into, uh, my business, my products, my customer service?

    (04:50):

    So reinforced learning, what not to do, and insights. So that’s, those are my tips for you today on keeping your mind open. Of course, I also recommend that you watch documentaries, um, read non-fiction, and from a variety, a variety of sources that may not be exactly your industry.

    (05:14):

    Because where, where we get stuck in ruts is by putting those blinders on and only looking at things that are from our industry instead of opening up our mind to different experiences.

    (05:27):

    And I will talk to you later. You can find out more about me on BridgetWillard.com. Bye.

  • Are Websites Actually Using Launch With Words Packs?

    Are Websites Actually Using my Agency Launch With Words Packs? Yes. Yes, they are.

    It may seem that $500 is a lot to throw down on a pack of blog posts. Maybe it is in comparison to using a $20 ChatGPT-written article. If that’s your point of view, this article isn’t going to convince you. I think AI writing assistants are a race to the bottom. But, that’s another blog post.

    The thing that makes Launch With Words different is the experience and expertise behind the writing — namely, mine. Sure, you can throw in prompts for AI writing assistants. People have been outsourcing writing for years — both overseas and abroad.

    To write copy that educates and convinces, however, takes more than cursory Googling or whatever the AI assistants think is right.

    That’s why Launch With Words is such a great deal. If you hired me to write these 12 articles just for your website, you’d be looking at over $2,500. And, unlike syndicated content, you can actually edit the blog posts.

    Why would you edit blog posts that are already written? Local SEO.

    “Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for a specific local area. If you have a local business, like a shop, restaurant, or agency, you want your web pages to rank for certain search queries performed by a local audience.” Willemien Hallebeek

    Websites That Use Launch With Words Content Packs

    The Centerville Chamber of Commerce, designed by Fat Dog Creatives is using the Chamber of Commerce Pack to supplement their own articles. 

    Creative Woodworking of Windsor is using the Residential General Contractor Pack to supplement its own articles. This pack was installed by the owner of the business. 

    Consult Cyndi used the Care Home Pack to boost visibility and SEO upon website launch. They’re now writing their own articles.

    Bauerle Roofing, a client of Highbridge Consultants, is using the Roofing Contractor Pack to boost its SEO efforts. 

    Cami MacNamera used the Roofing Contractor Pack when her new client EDCA Roofing wanted to add blog posts to their website. The Launch With Words Pack helped them publish their first blog post – ever. Now, the roofing pack serves to supplement their custom-written articles.

    Michael Grubbs, a Door County Handyman, launched his site with posts from the plumbing and contractor packs. Yes, you can combine them. Also, in fairness, I built this site, too.

    BuilderMarketers, a brand-new marketing agency focused on building websites for residential general contractors, is using Launch With Words. I built this site and used posts from the residential contractor pack, the WebDev SEO mini-pack, and the chamber of commerce pack. (That one has great posts about small business marketing.) I changed the CTA paragraph to the BuilderMarketers default closer. Copy/paste FTW.

    What About Duplicate Content?

    “What about duplicate content?” is a question I’m always asked. What about it? Is duplicate content the problem your client has? I doubt it. Right now, the problem is no content.

    What’s more is that WordPress developers have been sold the tale that duplicate content gives a website a bad mark for SEO. That’s simply not true.

    “Still worried about your page ranking? Ensure you highlight your new post on social media channels. Your audience can help promote your page through clicks, likes, links, and shares so it secures the visibility and reach it deserves.” Neil Patel

    “Duplicate content gives us choice. Duplicate content catches our eye. Duplicate content challenges us. With most of our websites beginning to look like identical block towers, duplicate content will make our websites great again!” Warren Laine-Naida

    “Matt Cutts said twice that you should not stress about it, in the worse non-spammy case, Google may just ignore the duplicate content. Matt said in the video, ‘I wouldn’t stress about this unless the content that you have duplicated is spammy or keyword stuffing.’” Search Engine Land

    Launch With Words Helps You Save Time and Add Value

    The reason I created Launch With Words (Media Ron LLC did the dev work) is to help small business owners with blogging prompts. Often, they don’t know what to write about.

    The reason why I wrote Premium Packs is because Developers are constantly waiting on clients to produce content. These packs, though blog articles, are a fantastic source of information for page content as well.

    Stop waiting for clients.

    Build the website.

    Add the content.

    Bill the client.

    Get paid.

  • Business Owners — Look For Patterns in Your Online Reviews — And Change

    It’s easy to brush off or even ignore poor online reviews? But if there are patterns in these reviews, maybe it’s YOU who needs to change.

    Do Online Reviews Matter?

    Yes, online review matter to potential customers. They’ll read bad and good reviews to get a feel for how you respond and whether or not the sizing is correct if you’re a clothing brand, have bugs if you’re a SaaS company, or poor service if you’re a coffee shop.

    Why Should My Small Business Care About Bad Reviews More than Good Reviews?

    Small businesses live and die on word-of-mouth referrals – this includes social media and search. So Suzie tells me that I must go to Chimichurri Palace for their Argentinan Steak, and I look it up. You do the same. 

    When I read that the Chimichurri Palace has repeated issues with their reservations or that the Chimichurri sauce isn’t authentic, well, then I take pause while considering Suzie’s recommendation. Maybe she doesn’t know what’s authentic. 

    As a business owner, looking at patterns in words used in negative reviews helps you spot problems in the way your business operates. It may give you insight into servers’ attitudes. Maybe all of the negative reviews are on Thursday nights when Brad is working. 

    You get the point.

    Watch the video to see more. 

    When’s the last time you read your online reviews looking for patterns?

    When’s the last time you used that insight to change your business for the better?

    Key Highlights

    00:02: Intro

    01:11: Read your worst reviews and track word counts. 

    02:58: What are the commonalities in your reviews? 

    04:11: Does your website help manage expectations or create gaps in expectations?

    04:49: How does a client know what it’s like to work with you?

    05:49: “What if that [negative review] is true? What on Yelp is true? What on Trustpilot is true?”

    06:31: But as business owners, we should do as much as we can as far as it has to do with our side of the street, with how we present ourselves, with the expectations that we have to communicate in a way that has hospitality, joy, honor, integrity, and, and quite frankly, that all boils down to respecting our customer.

    Raw Transcript

    (00:02):

    Hi, Bridget Willard here. I just wanted to have a chat with you real quick about online reviews. First of all, when is the last time that you, as a small business owner, went and left a review for another small business? Uh, whether it’s a supplier, a vendor, um, a colleague, a new restaurant in town, um, possibly even your competitor, like what. That’s some intellectual integrity right there, right? So the thing is that reviews are a big deal, and it’s so hard to get positive reviews because we are really quick to add a review when we’re upset. This place has bedbugs. There was a snail in my escargot. <Laugh> You know what I mean, like something extreme? Or you have the three-star Yelpers who wouldn’t be happy if they won a million dollars because you didn’t give ’em to ’em, give it to them in twenty-dollar bills.

    (01:11):

    <laugh>. So the thing is reading your reviews with a grain of salt, but read the worst ones. Read the worst ones with a notebook and start writing down. Like, you know, it’s, I have notebooks. I have several notebooks right here in my, in my office to go. I got this one says, “some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it,” “doing my best,” whatever it takes. I have a book with you, I really like. You know, people in all their notebooks. And like, it doesn’t, this is from CVS, it’s not that big of a deal. But like one, one thing that’s good about it is this, which means it lays flat. It is small enough to be in your purse, briefcase, backpack, and you could just go, okay. So I would write down, for example, with a pen, I would take it down and be like, okay, what’s the first thing in this bad review is, uh, “rude.” Okay? Like, that’s a word that’s being used. And then read through all the other reviews and just start tallying it up like it’s your domino score. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. How many times did somebody say in your online reviews that they had it, that someone was “rude” or “bad service” or, uh, “TV doesn’t work?”

    (02:41):

    Or, um, like it’s common with restaurants, right? Um, or in hospitality industry to, to have these. But there, there will be reviews, um, written online, uh, if you’re big enough, uh, maybe they’re on Glassdoor.

    (02:58):

    Uh, if you’re in travel, it could be on Expedia, Bookings.com, those kind of marketplaces. It could be a book, uh, like the book that Warren and I wrote, “The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Small Business,” which is on Amazon. Um, and maybe, maybe once you get into the two to three stars range, maybe it’s just lackluster. What things are, where are the commonalities in those? So bad review, people have distinct opinions; good review, people have distinct opinions. The people in the middle kind of get passed off. Like, well, they were, they had ridiculous expectations. Here’s where I am asking you to participate in your own business and your own business marketing. Is 10% of that true? 20%? 30%? How much of what that online review said is true? And if so, how much of that is in your control to fix it?

    (04:11):

    For example, we manage expectations with the copy we put on our websites. This is why, for example, I have public-facing pricing that’s transparent. It’s right there on slash pricing. BridgetWillard.com/pricing. You’ll see my pricing, you’ll see what it includes. I don’t believe in this kind of shell game that a lot of marketers do. Well, it depends. Yeah, it depends. And you just add ’em all up. <laugh> You know, of course I could do custom pricing and I have, and I do. But what, what is that expectation?

    (04:49):

    When it comes to being a WordPress developer? What is it gonna look like for them to work with you? Um, what is your process? How do you bill and in what increments? Are you like a lawyer and every time you get an email, that’s a 15 minute charge? You know? And, and then if you see that happening as a web developer, why, why are you not pushing that client onto a care plan? First of all, the, that gives you predictable income and it also helps them get the things done.

    (05:25):

    You know? It’s not. Clients don’t write wire frames and organize their content. This is why we have jobs, y’all. I write content. You put it on the website. They get customers. This is what we do as writers and WordPress developers, right? Marketers. Copywriters, I should say ’cause I’m not a novelist. <Laugh>

    (05:49):

    So the thing is like, what if that is true? What on Yelp is true? What on Trustpilot is true? What in your previous, when you were an employee, what in those performance reviews is true? And is any of that being, uh, is any of that carried over to your new business? To how you deal with clients? Do you think that they should know? Are you upset when they do X, Y, and Z? You know what of that is something that we <laugh> as business owners need to take to our therapist? And how much is it that the client is being difficult?

    (06:31):

    Sometimes difficulty with clients means the underlying situation is there is a lack of communication or in <laugh>, Cool Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” So communication, some of it’s on them, some of it’s on us. But as business owners, we should do as much as we can as far as it has to do with our side of the street, with how we present ourselves, with the expectations that we have to communicate in a way that has hospitality, joy, honor, integrity, and, and quite frankly, that all boils down to respecting our customer.

    (07:20):

    So if you like this video, share it with your friends. Uh, if you don’t like it, press thumbs up twice. <laugh> I’m back to doing videos. Uh, the, the farm partnership didn’t work out. That’s okay because I tried and I love chickens. I can’t wait to buy a house and have chickens. Uh, for now I just have a cat. Where are you cat? Meow. Meow. There he is, <laugh>. So thanks for tuning in. I would love to answer any of your marketing questions. Drop me a line. Hello@BridgetWillard.com. See you on the next one.

  • Don’t Let the Holidays Slow Down Your Marketing Momentum

    It’s easy to get past Halloween, cozy nights with pumpkin spice lattes, and start thinking of your week off between Christmas and New Year. But the danger of sliding through the end of the fourth quarter is the loss of marketing momentum.

    What is Marketing Momentum?

    In lay terms, momentum is the energy of motion. It’s kinetic motion as opposed to stored or potential motion. Marketing Momentum is the result of your campaigns working toward the same goal. In many ways marketing momentum has to do with the mindset of the company and the energy spent toward marketing efforts. If you slow down, your marketing momentum will as well.

    “Momentum is a physics term; it refers to the quantity of motion that an object has. A sports team that is on the move has the momentum. If an object is in motion (on the move) then it has momentum.” Physics Classroom 

    When small businesses feel they no longer need to use social media, for example, I use the example of a steam locomotive. Once running, a steam locomotive has the existing kinetic energy and potential energy of the coal burning to boil water. Should you decide to stop shoveling coal into the firebox, that train, fully stoked, will run for some time on the tracks until the water no longer produces steam. Gravity, depending upon the course of the train may help or hinder the kinetic energy as well. 

    What Does a Train Have to Do With Marketing Momentum?

    If you want your train to reach the end of the line, you must continue to stoke the fire. You can’t stop because you’ve reached the second to the last station. If you want your business to meet its marketing goals, you can’t stop because you’re daydreaming about extra profit for end-of-year bonuses, decorating your Christmas tree, or preparing for Hanukkah. 

    And, hey, I get it. It’s easy to become distracted by family, non-stop events, and gift buying. It’s natural to want to work fewer hours as daylight decreases. This is when grit and determination are important. Sure, your business can coast for a while, but what are the potential threats to that decision?

    Reducing Marketing Momentum is an Opportunity for Your Competition 

    Simply stated, reducing marketing momentum presents an opportunity for your competition. Much of marketing is about building (and maintaining) brand awareness. As economic uncertainty comes into play, your customers may forget you’re still in business. If they stop seeing your posts, they may think you’re out of business. 

    During the 2009 economic downturn at Riggins Construction & Management Inc., we turned to blogging and social media to remind our customers that we were still in business. Uncertainty is always an opportunity for those in healthy financial and business positions. 

    Marketing Budget and Marketing Momentum

    The real question about marketing momentum is can you really afford to reduce the marketing budget in the fourth quarter? How will that impact the first quarter of next year? Will it take more effort (and budget) to build back up your momentum? What customers will you lose? And what do you really gain? 

    I’m happy to engage in a complimentary sales call or paid marketing consultation to guide you through these questions. Often shifting budget is a better strategy than eliminating it altogether. 

  • FREE 5-Step SEO Copywriting Workflow for Small Business Owners

    Hey, Bridget Willard here with BridgetWillard.com. Are you wondering how I write? What is my SEO framework? My, my SEO workflow is. I bet you would like that. Free, free, free thing about SEO framework. Not a framework, but a workflow.

    And, I may add here that is a must have for new business owners. Firstly, so you have enough education to prevent you from being bamboozled an secondly, so you are better equipped to have fruitful marketing conversations. Thirdly, to do it yourself. 

    So. Why is SEO important? 

    SEO is important because you want people to know that you’re in business. You want people to know that you’re an authority in your field. You want people to know that you have expertise and you want people to know that you are trustworthy. So no matter how you call it, whether it’s E A T or T E A — either way, those three letters are really important when you talk about S E O. Acronyms all day long. And I was just chatting with my friend, who said, I don’t even know what SEO means. And I told her, it just means being found on the internet.

    So what does that entail? First of all, you need to understand what your business focus is. What are you trying to get people to do once they get to your website? That is a super important aspect, because here’s the thing. Um, if you don’t understand that — here’s Diesel — if you don’t understand what it is that you want people to accomplish, then you won’t look for the right questions or the right, uh, keywords and everything like that. And you want the right keywords, right? Keyword Diesel Cat says “yes, keywords matter, but what matters more long tail keywords.”

    What’s the best long tail keyword. Bridget? 

    I will tell you, it is a question. Because people are using Siri, Google, Alexa, voice search, to get you to understand, oh, what is the net worth of Diesel The Cat? You know, when is the next NBA game? Why is it important for me to have a plumber who replaces the wax seal every time the toilet is unmounted from its seat? Right? These are all important questions. So I know you’re waiting, you’re waiting so patiently for the SEO Workflow.

    The SEO Workflow is simple.

    First of all, what questions do you get in your business all of the time? This is super important to think of. So are people asking you what your hours are? Are people asking you what you do? Have you defined a layman’s term versus industry term glossary? So for example, are you calling it a, an assisted living facility, a type B assisted living facility? But maybe the vernacular or the colloquial term is care home or residential care home. Right? Are you calling it a glulam beam? Yeah, that’s what it’s called, but people might call it a header or an exposed beam, right? They don’t necessarily know what the glulam, um, means. I mean, once you define it, it’s fine. So you want to use the same phrasing as your customer.

    And the why is this hard?

    This is hard because we — are are you ready? — we are not our customers. And, and as industry experts, whatever industry you’re in, we are most often in our own way. That’s the hard part. So you want to ask questions. Now I bet you’re wondering — four minutes in, you got to meet the cat — what is going on with your free SEO workflow for copywriting? Well, I’m gonna give it to you. Are you ready? So you just have to understand why you’re doing this first.

    So the first thing I do is I go into Google on my machine. I am not doing a screen share ’cause you guys could do that on your own and they’re super boring. But I open my machine and I type in a question. Now, if you type in a question, Google’s gonna auto complete it. So for example, um, you can ask, “when do I replace the wax seal on my toilet?” Now, Google may give you different variations of that because it’s suggesting the rest of your question. That is a question that contains a long-tail keyword. And since 99% of the internet is not on the first page of a search, you really want these long tail keywords.

    And don’t forget that search is idiosyncratic. 

    Meaning everybody who searches gets results based upon the browser they’re in, uh, the, the query they’re using. So there might be on Yahoo. People still search on Yahoo. I don’t know if is AOL still around? I just saw some AOL email addresses the other day. Um, people use Opera, they use Bing. They use GoDuckGo for search. They use something else. There was something else I saw. So there’s a lot of different browsers and most browsers have a, um, their own search. 

    But <laugh> when I say browser, it makes me think of The IT Crowd of Jen and the button for the internet. <laugh> Microsoft, <laugh> Microsoft Explorer. That was, those are the days, right? 

    About Voice Search 

    So the way that you get on the internet or the way you search for things, isn’t a browser if you’re asking Alexa, Siri, Google, et cetera, then that is its own browser. Like, “Hey Alexa, what’s the best place to buy a toilet?” Or “Hey Alexa, should I use an elongated toilet or a round toilet?”

    Like there are definite, uh, definite answers. That’s not going to help you in this case. You want to type it in yourself slowly so that Google will auto suggest. You ready? That’s the first step in your workflow? Well, the pre-step is make sure, you know, or you’ve made a list in a, in a, like if you have a notebook, write down a list of everything that people ask you and it like really annoys you, that somebody doesn’t know the answer to this question. Why do they keep asking to you over and over and over again? Why, why, why or how, how, how and what, what, what. What is this? What is that? What does that mean? Da, da, da, da. Make a list of those questions. Put a timer on your phone and list them out and then translate it into normal people jargon. If you’re not sure this is why this Google this first step in my SEO Copywriting Workflow is the most important. Okay.

    Step one review: type in Google, accept their answer — as long as it’s reasonable — that is the title of your blog post. That’s the title of your article. Okay. Place that into Word or I use Google docs. Then on that same page, once you get the results, you will see when you scroll down a section called People Also Ask, and there will be four or three to four questions there that you can actually expand. If you click on a little thing right here and it’ll go <sound effect> and you, so first you’ll see the zero answer or the featured snippet. Then you might see some ads and then you’ll see People Also Ask. Again, you need to do this on your actual machine. It doesn’t always appear this way on mobile.

    So after you’ve done that, look at those People Also Ask.

     If they’re all super similar, then it might not work. But most of the time, I just copy those and paste them into my Google document. Um, and then of those, I pick three of ’em to be my H2s. H2 is like the way that HTML the. When you’re writing for the internet and when you see something on the internet, it’s, it’s written in hyper text markup language, H T M L hyper text markup language. And so we want it to be an outline because using these headings in a consecutive order allows Google et al, any search engine, to appropriately index and outline your thoughts. Okay? So why this is important is that, um, well, first of all, it’s good for accessibility, but it also gives the reader an opportunity to see those choices.

    And again, Google is giving you the cheat sheet. This is the cheat seat, cheat cheat seat, ah, cheat sheet for S E O. Cheat seat. Ah, I can’t say it. <laugh> Shelly sells seashells by the seashore. <laugh> it’s a tongue twister. The cheat sheet for SEO. Right? So people also ask.

    One auto complete the question. Two people also ask. Now, now you have your outline. The fourth H2 will be your call to action. Are you curious more about this topic? Now? What you gonna wanna do is in at least one of those H2s and it probably should be that way. You want to make sure that your keyword is in there. You want your keyword, not everywhere. Like just putting Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber the way we used to or not we, but black hat SEOs. So you want your keyword in the meta description. You want your keyword in the title. You want your keyword in, uh, the first paragraph. You want your keyword in the last paragraph and it in at least one of those H2s. Okay. So step one, auto complete. I’m not taking, I’m not giving you a worksheet. So take notes or rewind <laugh> you gotta watch the video.

    Um, step one is auto complete. Step two People Also Ask. Step three, add your own H2 for the closing paragraph, with the call to action. The call to action should be signed up today, learn more, get it now. And it links to your product, your contact page, something like that. What do you want people to do now that they’ve read this article? Answer that question there. So now you’re almost finished writing the article and that’s all you’ve done. 

    Step three is go back to those first page results. 

    If you’re not there and find something of one of those first page quotes of links to quote in your article, — as long as it’s not a competitor. Right? So this is why when I’m writing for Launch With Words, the content packs for Launch With Words are written this way. So they are written to be specifically generic. So the plumbing pack, for example, will refer to This Old House or Kohler a manufacturer, right? But it’s not going to link to Bob’s Plumbing in San Antonio, because it’s not, you do not want to link to your competitor. Right?

    So this is the framework. So find something that, that is appropriate for that within those first few articles that you can quote within your article. Now at this step, you have a title. You have People Also Ask. You have a call to action. That’s three, you have quotes. That’s four. Now, five fill in the rest. It’s faster than, uh, <laugh> faster than writing a five paragraph essay.

    Five free tips to SEO workflow for copywriting.

    This workflow for blog content and articles are so important. I am very behind on writing for my own website, but I will tell you another trick. You can edit content and that is still a change your site map. And that’s what Google wants.

    So if you have questions, if you have concerns, if you have issues, feel free to comment, uh, on YouTube where this video will live or in the blog post, or I’ll see you on Twitter. Bye.

    Thanks for bearing with my transcript of the video. Feel free to share.