Category: Content Marketing

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.