Make Marketing Suck Less

Are you over social media? Being on the constant content hamster wheel? Must create social media posts so people know that I exist. Must feed the algorithm so new people find my work! What if there was a better way? A way that you've most likely heard about, but probably dismissed because it's gotten a bad rap because of people doing some devious black hat tricks? What if it could be done ethically so that you're getting found by new people every dang day without feeding the social media beast?

What am I talking about? S E O or search engine optimization. Now, when I first started my business -- my public speaking consultancy -- I went all in on SEO. And guess what? It worked! It works incredibly well. In fact, I'm still being found for public speaking posts that I wrote back in 2012 and 2013. 

Now that I want to be found for something else, I'm going all-in on it again with the help of my friend Meg Casebolt. I love Meg because her approach to SEO is so easy to understand. It's so approachable. So I wanted her to speak to you about getting your work found without having to rely solely on social media. 

So a bit about Meg -- she's the founder of Love at First Search, an agency singularly devoted to helping businesses owned by women and women-identified entrepreneurs to get found in search results. Meg’s clients are entrepreneurs who are too busy changing the world to worry about things like website conversion rates and search traffic but still want their websites to get found on Google for their brilliance. 

SEO is our vehicle for amplifying female entrepreneurial voices and empowering women to help their families, communities, and the wider world flourish. I really enjoyed this conversation with Meg. It is a non-techie, so don't be worried that we're talking about SEO. We don't get into tech speak and I'll be back at the end to help you reflect on your next steps.

You’re listening to the Rebel Uprising Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping passionate business owners become recognized leaders who make more money and impact the world by turning their messy, complicated ideas into thriving thought leadership businesses.

I’m your host Dr. Michelle Mazur, and I’ll be your no-BS guide in the art of building a business that gets noticed. Each week, I share strategies, tools, and insights into how to turn your complicated ideas into great messaging and solid business structures. 

Are you ready to create an uprising in your industry? Let’s do this.

MM: Welcome, Meg. I am so thrilled to have you on the Rebel Uprising Podcast! 

MC: I’m so thrilled to be here, Michelle, even though I know I strong-armed you into inviting me onto the podcast. I'm so glad that we're doing that. 

Michelle: What’s interesting -- and in full disclosure, Meg is my person for SEO. Like I pay her money so I could be found on the web. And you're also the person that I always recommend if my clients are going to blog as part of their marketing and visibility strategy, I'm like, “You need to go find Meg and learn about SEO -- search engine optimization. So let's start there. What exactly is SEO and why the hell is it important in our businesses? 

MC: You just gave me the acronym, which is SEO is search engine optimization. When we think about search engines, most times people's minds go to Google or sometimes Bing and Yahoo or DuckDuckG, or any of those kinds of secondary levels.

But we can also think about places like YouTube or Pinterest. Those are also search engines. Anywhere that you can go type in a search box what you're looking for and have results pop up. Those are the systems and structures that we're trying to get in front of.

And then the optimization side of it, when we say search engine optimization, is what you can do on or around your website to help you show up in those search engine results.

So there's my short-answer way of saying it. It's about getting a better quantity and quality of traffic through organic search. So for SEO, we're talking only about the free stuff. I'm really frugal. I don't want to spend money on ads if I can get things for free, like I'm like the thrift store version of marketing.

MM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because what I love about it -- and we can talk, I really do want to talk about this -- is that you just said right before we went live, that there's no point in blogging. If it's never going to get found.

MC: Yes. If all you're doing with your blog is like, sending it to your email list once and sharing it on social a little bit, then you don't need to have a blog. You can just write those as emails or write them as social media posts, right?

The benefit of putting them on your website -- there's two, I would say. One is that you can get found for that content by being super clear about what that blog post is about and how it answers a solution or gives people a solution to a problem. And the other benefit of it is that it gives you more authority. 

MM: There is that word again: authority. This is Michelle popping in because I want you to pay particular attention to this concept: blogging increases your authority. You're out there, you're creating content, putting your thought leadership into the world. That's authority building and getting it found is what search engine optimization can do for you. 

I'll let Meg continue on.  

MC: So if you have a depth of content that you've created, if you have multiple blogs on similar topics, and then somebody clicks to your website, they can click into other blog posts and other offers that you have, and they can get to know you and like you and trust you, without you needing to create something new every day, which is fabulous.

MM: Yeah, and I think that's the big part is that SEO really lets your content live on. It's not just the, “Oh, I wrote this thing once and now it's like dead on my blog or on my website.” 

MC: Really in a perfect world, your blog should not be collecting dust. Whatever information you put on your website, not even just blogs -- product listings, case studies, videos, show notes -- all of that should be helping you get found by new people all the time, not just being a snapshot of what you did one day, but being something that people can find infinitely for you. Michelle, you and I were just working on a blog post that you wrote in 2013 that's still bringing in a ton of traffic for you. And we're like, “Okay, what can we do to get more people looking at this, but more of the right people looking at this that will then take your quiz, join your email list, book a call with you.”

Like it's not just about getting eyeballs onto your site. It's about getting the right people who want to give you money to find you when they want to find you.

MM: Yes. And I think that's the big thing. The reason why I hired you is because I was like, “Okay, I'm still being found for being a speech coach. How do we begin to change that?”

MC: I think the thing that you said that really stuck with me too when we were in that conversation, is you were like, “I did SEO 10 years ago to be a speech coach. I'm still being found for being a speech coach. Now I've pivoted. And I didn't think, ‘Oh, I should write more content because clearly what worked as a speech coach is working.’”

Like, sometimes we forget these things and we just go, “Oh, Instagram's more fun.” But no, what you did from 2010 to 2013 is still working for you. Yes, we can always be creating new things, but the stuff that we've already done can be really powerful in the long term for us. 

MM: Yeah, because it is, the process I've been going with you is going through and updating some of those old posts to make them relevant to messaging and that's been like a fun project for me, just thinking about this old content that was about keynote speaking and public speaking and thinking about, “Okay, how do I interweave the importance of messaging into this?”

MC: Yeah. And I think so many of us have these -- I hate the word journey, I don't want to use the word journey -- but like you're taking a walk down memory lane of what your business used to be in order to infuse what you want to be now into it. So it's not once we create something once -- it's a little harder with something like a video that you would have to go back in and re-edit and republish -- but for written content, there's no rule that it's not written in stone, it's completely able to be updated to meet where you are now.

So if you have content that you've already written and you feel like, “Oh, that's not even relevant to me anymore.” Could it be? What can you do to make it something that your new people want to find? Not just what people found four to five years ago. But what about now? What can you do in that walk down memory lane that would still be relevant to what you're doing now? 

MM: Yeah, because that content that I wrote and that my listeners are probably writing right now, it's still really good and relevant. It's just making it relevant to the new business. 

MC: Yeah. And sometimes it's as simple as putting in a new call to action in that space or including one new paragraph. We don't always have to go in and rewrite everything. And sometimes you just want to go in and say, “What is this ranking for that I can capitalize on?”

The word optimization is there for a reason, it's not always about creation and producing and making more, it's about tweaking and adjusting and pivoting and making things better instead of creating new all the time. And I guess my thrift store metaphor is coming through again. Things can be repurposed, they can be reused, they can find new hands! 

MM: Yes. And I feel like we're always on this, like, content hamster wheel of more and more, and I got to have a new blog post or a new podcast and I've got to have a new Instagram post or five Instagram posts for the week.

So do you think that SEO really allows you to get off that content hamster wheel?

MC: It can. If you choose to go all-in on SEO, you can totally shut down your social media profiles, but it is going to be a big commitment at the front end. And you may lose out part of that audience that isn't aware that you exist yet. That isn't aware that the thing that you do exists yet.

So if nobody knows that there is such a thing as a messaging coach, then they won't go looking for you. But if you show up in someone else's feed, maybe they'll go down that rabbit hole too.

So there is still an amount that you can attract new people through social media through a stumbling, sharing world. So I'm not saying that it has to be search OR social, but I do believe that if you can get your traffic to your website through search engines, you don't have to be as dependent on social. You don't have to be as beholden to social media.

And, Michelle, you and I are recording this in November, 2020, right? So this year has told us multiple times, we've been told like, “Oh, there's a pandemic happening. Turn off your Facebook ads.” “Oh, this black lives matter month, so we want to amplify melanated voices so stop posting right now.” There've been times where the marketing world has just stopped this year. “Oh, it's, it's the election season, so don't bother posting anything cause it's going to get lost.”

And through all of those times where we were told by the powers that be that we have to turn everything off, whether, in a respectful way, not, I'm not resentful of that, but when you're trying to be respectful to what's happening in the world, in a global pandemic, people were still going to Google. Nobody was saying turn off your websites.

I just wrote about this, about the trends of what was spiking in search traffic -- in March it was baking bread, in June, it was portable pools, like what are the things that people were looking for even when the social media marketing systems were shut down? Even when Instagram just turns off for an afternoon and everyone freaks out, Google doesn't do that.

So just thinking through like, there are times where you are told to stop posting, but nobody's turning off your website ever. 

MM: Well, and to me, this is like the reason why you should invest in SEO. Yes, it gets you found by people who might not be aware of you yet, but if Facebook or Instagram disappear or something happens, your website and being able to be found, you still ultimately have control over that, whereas you don't have control over, “Oh, the pandemic's happening and we're not posting about anything” or “We shouldn't be selling right now” for whatever reason. You don't have control of that, but you do have control over people finding your website every day if you do search engine optimization. 

MC: Yeah. And even if you're super clear about your messaging, and you're super clear about how you want to show up on these platforms, you also can't control what's happening around you.

So by the time somebody is scrolling through Facebook and sees your posts, it might be below something that's politically really aggravating and they're coming into it with a crap mood and then they see you and they carry it over. They're not actively searching for you and you can't control the environment that they're engaging with your content in.

Whereas if they're on your website, everything that's on the sidebar, everything across the top, everything across the footer, you're in control of that entire experience, not just that moment that they're scrolling and they can keep going to find the next cat picture.

MM: And that's the other thing, like I always talk to my clients about I have them pick one main social media squeeze, and I'm like, “You have to realize you are competing with cat means and baby pictures and baby Yoda. Like that is your competitive set on like Instagram or any kind of social media.”

So the fact that you can have people come to your website and know that they're actually looking for something that's related to what you do, that's powerful. 

MC: It's that idea of inbound marketing -- people are looking for you because they are looking to learn something or buy something or interact with you in some way as opposed to you are interrupting what they were already doing. 

MM: Yes. So my next question I have for you is I have noticed that SEO is really male-dominated. And even today, like I opened my email and I had some, like, cold email about SEO optimization for my website from some dude.

So I was wondering, since it is very male-oriented and sometimes SEO can feel like the way people talk about it can feel a little slimy, like how did you get started doing SEO? Because you are the opposite of all of those things.

MC: I like to think that, hank you. My kind of experience of learning SEO was an on-the-job experience. It wasn't a I came out of college going, “What I want to do is have people put on Google.”

It was very much a stumbling. And so many of our lives are, is this like test and pivot and work optimization in a lot of ways. But so I had been a web designer and building people's websites. I started building websites on GeoCities in 1996. I was that big of a nerd in middle school. I go way back on the HTML. And so I started my own business in 2013 building websites for people, and I would build out the websites and they would look all the things that you want. They would be beautiful and it connected to social and it had the right messaging and then we'd launch and they'd be like, “This is great. Everyone loves it. Where's my new traffic? Like why aren't people finding this?” And I'm like, “Because we talked about your brand and your logo and your colors and your message. And we didn't really plan for new people to find it.”

There was like this unspoken expectation that I wasn't fulfilling because it was unspoken. They didn't even know that they wanted it until they launched to crickets.

And so I felt really beholden to my customers and felt really guilty that they had this implicit idea of what the new website would give them that I didn't give them and I felt guilty and I wanted to figure out how to improve it.

MM: This is Michelle interrupting again with the question for you. Be honest. Did you ever think, “Oh, once I build my website, it is going to be so amazing and so beautiful that all the people will flock to it.” This is a common thought in the online business world that the pretty website will make all the people flock to it. 

I've had this thought myself and it's just not true. You could have the world's most beautiful website. But if it is not optimized for search, no one's going to find you. Now back to Meg.

MC: And so I started teaching myself. What can I, as a web designer, implement on their wire frames or how can I make sure that people are coming to them and how can I make sure every page shows up in search and what are the things that I as a designer can do to improve their user's experience?

And just started playing with it on my customers, on my clients' websites and talking to other designers and saying like, “How do you find the time to do all these things? And also keep up with all the plugins and all the trends and like how is this even possible that you can be good at everything?”

You can't be really good at CSS and really good at SEO. And a lot of the designers I talked to said I either outsource it or I don't do it. Like I don't have time to do it. I wish I did. I wish I knew how to do it, but I don't. And then I started teaming up with those designers and doing SEO for their clients.

So it very much was an unexpected specialization when I just saw a gap in the marketplace, especially to come back to your original question, where a lot of the designers that I was working with. And I met your designer and I were at a mastermind together. And so she was one of my first SEO clients as a subcontractor.

But a lot of them had worked with the kind of typical SEO agency, more bro marketing, more technical SEO experiences. Or by the time their clients came to them for new web design, they'd had that experience and were really turned off by that experience of working with, I'll just call them the bros because I'm with you.

They were like, “Oh, we're going to get you to number one on Google, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look at all these green lights we have.” But they didn't think cohesively and comprehensively about how SEO fits into a larger marketing strategy or the way that it can be appealing to people or the experience that people have once they get on the site.

It was just a game of numbers. And of shoving keywords into specific places to get specific results and maybe even doing some like sketchier outreach, so in case people aren't familiar with this term, there's like white hat SEO, which is like, what Google says is okay. And then there's black hat SEO, which is like off limits, but still works.

And then there's like gray hat in between. I hate that. I hate these terms. They’re so stupid. But just to give an idea, like I'm all white hat SEO. And a lot of people come to me cause they're like, “Oh, this guy had black hat SEO on my site and he crashed it and then Google shut it down and it burned through all of my traffic.” They've had terrible experiences working with people who are sketchy.

And once I realized like kind of the seedy underbelly of the industry, I was like, “Okay, I need to create an alternative to this. That is easy to understand. That is empathetic, that is relational.” That is it's about not just let me, it's not a pissing contest. It's about getting people to find you. And it's about getting the right people to find you that want to work with you. And I don't know why it has to be so painful. 

MM: That’s one of the things that drew me to your work is that you're very plainspoken and it's very relationship-oriented, which I think leads to your company's name, Love at First Search. And I'd love to know, how did you come up with it and why did you decide to move in that direction? 

MC: I came up with a kind of unexpectedly. I was just writing an email about -- again, going back to like my 1996 web design time -- and I said “when I opened up Google analytics for the first time it was love at first search.

And it just came out of my fingers when I was writing an email. And it was one of those things where you type it and then you immediately go buy the domain and have no idea what you're going to do with that. 

MM: Yes. I'm very familiar with that.

MC: I'm such a hoarder, MIchelle!

MM: You are not alone! I've hoarded domains, I've gotten better about it. I know a lot of my clients are domain hoarders, so you're in good company.

MC: I always have at least like a dozen that are floating around there, but that one, I just kept coming back to and thinking like, is this an offer? It's a great phrase. It was ripe for the taking. I checked the patent office and all those things to make sure that nobody else had used it. And it just felt the next evolution of my brand in so many ways.

When I'd gone from web designer to SEO person, it took me a long time to stop saying web design and SEO because web design felt like a security blanket. It felt like “people know what that is.” They trust web designers, they know what the outcome's going to be. There's going to be a deliverable at the end of it. Whereas making that transition in a messaging way to only SEO was scary. But then when I decided to rebrand, it really was my way of putting a stake in the ground and saying, this is what I do and this is the experience I want people to have when they work with my clients, is to be scrolling through Google and be like, “Ah, yeah, that's the one, that's the thing I'm looking for! I didn't even know I wanted that. And there it is. It's waiting for me.”

MC: And I think what's interesting too is a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are in pivots. And like you had to go through this process of being like, “Okay, I'm a web designer. And now I'm a web designer who also does SEO.” To finally being like, “Nope, Love at First Search. That's my thing. That's what I want to be known for. I'm putting the stake in the ground.”

MC: Exactly. And then I had to make that decision. And I go through this with a lot of my clients too, which is like, how narrow do you want to be? How narrow makes sense for you? I don't want to go too heavy into the niching conversation, but from a search perspective, like Google really loves specificity. And if you can say “I do SEO,” you're going to get more clicks than all things web design. The more of a generalist you are, the harder it is for Google to pinpoint what it is that you do.

So part of the decision to make that pivot was just looking at the numbers and recognizing that. And here's where the data analytics part of my brain starts to light up as knowing that the keyword difficulty for some terms is just easier than others.

And so making that pivot was closing one door, but opening so many more and recognizing that if somebody comes to me and says, “Hey, I love what you do. Can you help me with my website?” I can still say yes! I don’t have to say no, just because it doesn't have those words on my website, it doesn't mean I have to say no.

It just means that there's one thing that I want to be found for first and foremost, but it doesn't mean that I have to stop doing other things that I like doing. Especially for my favorite clients. I do lots of things outside of scope for my favorite clients, because I love them. 

MM: Oh yeah, me too. I still have clients who we do the Three Word Rebellion Messaging Intensive, and then they're like, “Can you help me write this keynote speech or create this webinar?” And I'm like, “Sure. I'd love to,” because that's easy for me, even though I don't want to be known for that. It doesn't mean that I won't do it anymore. Like I still enjoy doing keynote speeches. I just don't want to be known for that.

MC: There are clients that I -- Lacey Boggs, I was her graphic designer for five years and I gave up graphic design for everyone but Lacey because I just loved her brand so much. And I had so much fun doing her like retro vintage images. It was just a creative outlet for me in a lot of ways that wasn't scratched by SEO. So I got to keep being paid for doing something I liked, but only for the people whose brands I already knew that it was easy to just keep going on it. I didn't have to just be like, “Nope, Lacey, I'm sorry. I don't do this anymore.” No, who cares? I can do whatever I want. I run this show. 

MM: I'm the owner. I can do whatever I want. 

MC: Exactly. And I'm so glad you said owner, not boss, but that's another messaging conversation for another day. 

MM: Oh my gosh. Yes. So where should people start? When it comes from SEO, they hear our conversation they're like, “Okay, I do need to be found. So I'm just not solely relying on social media.” How can they get started with SEO, especially if they're newbies to it?

MC: All right. So I would give you two options here. The first is if you have created content before, whether that's having a podcast, having a blog, having a YouTube channel, whatever, if you have a lot of information already on your website in some way, then I suggest going to look at what it is that you rank for.

Start there. Start with, what do I already have? What are the assets that I have? Because a lot of times people are getting search traffic and they don't know what it's for. Or sometimes there are these awesome unicorns of like you're getting a ton of inquiries from Google. And when they say, “Where did you find me?” It's, “Oh, I found you on Google.”

And then you have no idea what they were searching for so you can't make more of it. Like very common. But you want to know what they're searching for because something in your marketing is working.

So the place I would send those people who are already having some kind of -- I don't really even want to say viral success -- but some unexpected or unplanned success, which is a nice place to be, is go to a tool called Google Search Console -- it's like a stepchild to Google Analytics, tells you everything that happens on the site once people get there, Google Search Console tells you everything that happens before they get there. So when they look you up on Google, what are the things that they're looking for? What are the exact search terms they're looking for? What pages are ranking the best for you? Like it gives you so much information.

And also if there's anything broken with your site, it tells you that too. So that's also very important for that reason. But definitely start with what you already have? Take an inventory of what's happening on your website before you start thinking about what else you need to create, look at what's working. 

MM: Yeah. That’s such good advice to look at. What's working before you start just like, “All right, now I'm going to create new things!” 

MC: Exactly. And then if you haven't started creating that's okay too. There's room for you to create. Google is not a monolith that everything is locked. It's not the YellowPages that they like print once a year. Like even if you've never written a blog post or made a video before, there's still space for you on Google, it changes like 300,000 times a year. So don't feel like you're locked out. Start writing stuff.

Sart thinking this way… If I have an offer -- and I know you have a lot of service people in your audience. So if I have a service that I want people to buy from me, what are the questions that people are showing up to my inbox with? What are the objections that I hear on sales calls? What are the posts that I get tagged in social media?

Instead of writing those as emails or social posts take those ideas, put them in like an idea bank, and then go to a place like Google Keyword Planner, or Keywords Everywhere, or Uber Suggest, or even go to Google and look up what some of those terms are. Look at what is showing up in those search results and just get an idea for what's working for the questions that people are asking you. 

MM: Yes. And I think that's important -- look at the questions that people are asking you, because that is the clue. That is a clue. 

MC: Yeah. And Google will give you so much information just on the search engine results page. So if you're like, “People asked me this question. If they're emailing me this question, chances are, they're also going to Google.” If they don't have a me in their lives. Let me go to Google and look at not just what are the other search results, but there's a section that usually shows up on pages that say “people also ask.” What are the other questions they're asking?

And the very bottom of the page, there's a section that says “related searches.” What does Google think is related to this that maybe closer to what I want to be found for or maybe a step in a different direction from where I want to be found for it? And you can just use that information of what Google already knows to start building out what you want to be showing up for in those results.

MM: Yes. And I think it brings out two keys. You have to know what you want to be found for, and then paying attention to the questions people are asking you about what you do. 

MC: Exactly. And that's why I always start with what is the offer that you want people to buy from you? Because a lot of times we'll go write something that's fairly generic or fairly clever, or, like tangentially related. And then it takes that much more time to nurture people.

You have a blog post about how to write a speech and you don't want to teach people how to write a speech, then you don't want those people. It takes so much more time to walk them to where you want them now. Whereas if you have a blog post about, “Hey, this is something that I teach in this workshop it's running next week, come join us.”

Then that's going to be a person who is a much warmer lead for you. So think about what are the things that your warm leads are curious about and answer their questions publicly. That's really what your blog is -- answering questions publicly instead of putting it into an email that only shows up for people who are already familiar with you, right? Go publish it. And that way Google can find it and share it with new people who are looking for it. 

MM: Yes. All right, Meg, are you ready for the lightning round of Three Word Rebellion questions?

MC: Are you sure? I don't know how fast I can't be fast for lightning round, but...

MM: We'll do our best. What's one, just one thing you're rebelling against?

MC: I think for me, it would be that like, hustle, hamster wheel feeling of never feeling like you can take a break and never feeling like you're done and always feeling like you have to create more and more, and like the maximalism of online marketing. I'm just over it. 

MM: Me too, actually. I'm all about minimalism these days. All right. Question number two. What change do you want to create in the world? 

MC: I want more women-owned businesses to not just even be found in search, but to be just like crazy profitable and just like making so much money. And I want the bros, not even all guy-led businesses, this isn't just like smashing the patriarchy, even though it is, I just want women to show up with as much power and with as amplified voices as their male counterparts.

I just want it to be an even playing field because, and I'm probably going to answer your next question in the same breath, but like, Michelle, I have a master's degree in economic development. And I think the place that I come from with the mission of my company is really from a place of economic development, of knowing that all of the tests that have been done around microenterprise and the work that is done, the way that the world changes when women have money is incredible.

That's really where I'm coming from. I'm having trouble saying it, but like  we're familiar with Mohammad Yunus. He was the first person to do micro banking and micro lending in rural Bangladesh. And what he found is that if households had only one like breadwinner and the male, the man of the house was the one making the money, then it would either be spent on him and his immediate family, or put into a bank and never used or blown in some way is what he was finding.

But when the women were building out these micro businesses, sewing businesses or milking goats or things along those lines, these small household businesses, the money that they would get would be reinvested back into the communities. They'd be investing in their kids, clothes, and shoes. They'd be investing in the schools, they'd be investing in the cousins that need things.

It would raise the entire benefit to the community. And that was research that was done in the eighties and nineties, and they've just continued to find it to be true, that the more that women are financially independent and the more that the women are, the ones who are managing the household checkbooks and making the money and spending the money, the better it is for society.

And so that's the vision for what I want the world to look like is just to be able to take care of each other better and to be less about -- and I'm not anti capitalist by any means -- I want to make money. I want to pay taxes. But I also want to make sure that the money that I make is invested in appropriate ways and that it's not just going to benefit me and go into my yacht. I'll take the yacht. But I also wanna make sure that my employees have smaller yachts than me. 

MM: And that reminds me, my retirement funds are with a company called Ellevest and when they sent me my debit card, it comes in a “money is power,” like little folder, but inside the folder, there's a piece of paper that says “nothing bad happens when women have more money.” And I'm like, yes. That's the change to create, right? Like when women have more money, it helps society. 

MC: I think that's so true. And especially women from marginalized communities, being able to make their own money and women who are in toxic workplaces, being able to leave those places and work for themselves.

Like it just makes such a difference. When women have money, they have freedom, they have choices, and they have better lives. And that to me is the change that I would want. From all of this, it's not just about SEO. It's about financial freedom. 

MM: Yes. So, Meg, this is a beautiful way to end it there, but tell everyone where they can find you online, or if they want to start learning SEO from you.

MC: Sure. So head on over to loveatfirstsearch.com, should hopefully be easy to remember since we talked about the brand name so much, and you can go to loveatfirstsearch.com/michelle, and I'll have waiting for you there my SEO starter kit, and a couple other goodies that I'll put together for you based on what we talked about here.

MM: Awesome. Thank you so much, Meg. This was such an amazing conversation.

MC: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciated the opportunity.

This episode fascinated me. And one idea that I want you to think about is if your social media platform of choice disappeared tomorrow, would people still be able to discover your business? If the answer is no, you might want to think about diversifying. Like Meg said, it's not an either/or thing when you want to grow your audience and be found, you can do both social media and SEO, but SEO gives you control of being found, even when the world gets in the way and people tell you that you should not be marketing or promoting your business. 

Google is never closed for search. And if you're found on Google, there is always an opportunity for people to find you. So if you're into blogging or YouTube videos, because let's face it, Google owns YouTube, then I challenge you to go out and find out what you're already ranking for. Look at what you've created and take the steps Meg recommends to be found, because none of us should be dependent on social media platforms for the health of our business. None of us should be dependent on social media platforms for the health of our business. Take control of a being found, and that ensures your business thrives.

Now, if you don't know what you should be blogging about, or you don't know what you should blog about that moves people who land on your website closer to becoming clients, that's one of the things that I help clients with in the Three Word Rebellion Messaging Intensive. 

All of my clients leave with at least 20 content ideas that are optimized to convert your right audience, your right people into paying clients. One of my clients, a spa owner on a mission, Claudia Cardova, she added an extra $2,000 a month to her online sales when she implemented her Three Word Rebellion messaging and marketing strategy. 

Ready to find out more? Then book a call with me and 3wrcall.com. We'll talk about how you and I can work together to convert more strangers into clients so your business is more profitable than before. That's 3wrcall.com.

Until next time, to grow your audience. You gotta be found. You've just got to be found. So create content that makes people fall in love at first search and you'll see your business and your audience grow.  

Thank you for listening all the way to the end of the show. Your support means the world to me. Did you know the Rebel Uprising Podcast has a quiz that can help you pinpoint the number one way to create an audience of superfans while staying true to your unique personality? We do! And it’s called What’s Your Rebel Roadmap to Exponential Impact and Influence and you can take it at therebelquiz.com.

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And now get back out there and cause an uprising in your industry. You got this!