Before You Pay Someone to Do Your SEO

Welcome to the Website Success Show

Hi, it is Jules here. Welcome back to the Website Success Show, where I teach local and online business owners simple strategies to help you get more traffic and make more sales through your existing website, so you can keep control of your marketing, escape the social media overwhelm, and instead focus on doing what you love.

Recap: Growing a business without social media

Over the last few episodes, we have been focusing on how to grow a business without social media. I kicked off this series back in episode 136 on growing your business without social media, how I do it and how you can do it as well. Then I explored how networking has helped me grow my business without social media, and how collaborations can help you too, with the wonderful Julie C Butler. It has been lovely having some guests on. I do not have many guests on the show, but it all just came together from conversations I had been having, and I wanted to bring in different experts who could help you understand the different ways you can grow your business without social media. Because SEO is just part of that, and your website and the content you own is just part of it too, but it is all part of that bigger picture of business owners who are done with the social media grind.

Since I have been talking about this more and more, I have had more conversations. People come through discovery calls and the first thing they mention is that they love the sound of growing their business without social media, or just having less reliance on it, so they are not burning themselves out slogging away on there and getting nothing back.

Social media is optional

The most popular episode of the podcast by a long way is episode 102, which is social media is optional and how to grow a business without constant posting. I have been talking about social media being optional pretty much from the start of the podcast, back in episode two even, which was about why you do not need to keep feeding the algorithm and how to use your existing content potential to show up in search. So this has been baked in from the start.

Since I broke up with social media at the end of January, things have changed. I do still use it for my cold water swimming community, because I need to check on Facebook once a week whether a swim is happening, as we swim somewhere quite remote. And if someone messages me or tags me, I will respond. But I am not posting, I am not checking it daily, and I am not using it to grow my business. Since I made that conscious decision to step back, I have found I attract more people who like the sound of that. It is very rare that I mention my philosophy on social media and someone says they love using it. The ones who do tend to have a bigger following and are making money from it, which makes sense. But the majority of small business owners I talk to hate it, and hate the mental health implications of using it. I talked about that back in episode 105, why your brain and business deserves a break from harmful social media.

Does AI search change things?

So today I wanted to explore whether AI search changes things. I saw a couple of emails this week, one in particular I found a little triggering, because there is so much noise right now that SEO is dead or SEO has changed. Things have changed a little, but when you dig deeper into what people are teaching, it is still SEO underneath it all. Your website still needs to be optimised, well set up for the bots to read through and for people to understand and take the action you want. Ultimately it is about the words you use on your website and where you put them, and that has not really changed.

Whether you call it SEO, GEO, AI search or AI visibility, it is basically about having your website set up in a way that is searchable and findable and connects with people when they are searching for a business like yours. People are out there searching, particularly for local and niche businesses. They want to find you, buy from you and solve their problem, and if you are the solution, making sure your website gets that across to both the bots and the people really matters.

How I work differently from SEO agencies

I work very differently from SEO agencies, because when I first got into SEO I talked to so many business owners who had been paying someone for months or years, were not seeing a difference, and were no closer to understanding why. I only work with business owners who are ready to do the strategy work. I think of myself as an SEO or website coach, helping you understand what needs to happen on your website. You also need the capacity, either the skills or the budget, to implement the strategy once we have created it, whether that is you, a VA or someone in your team. And you need a genuine need for a steady stream of leads, the kind of business that always needs new people coming in, like a physio or a laser tattoo removal studio.

Doing this work yourself, or at least understanding it, means that if you outsource later you know what you are outsourcing, so you will not get bamboozled by tech or have the wool pulled over your eyes, and you can check the work. I know people who have paid for SEO, and when I point out fundamental things that have not been done, they start to question what has actually happened. One SEO person I follow shared a video breaking down the costs of running an agency, and worked out that spending less than a thousand dollars, about £850 a month, is realistically what an agency needs to charge just to do the work, even with cheaper labour abroad. So if you are spending three, four or five hundred pounds, it feels like a lot, but you are not getting much done. That is why I love working with business owners who want to do this themselves. As I talked about in episode 108, on the three brain modes you need for SEO, you as the business owner still need to be involved in the strategy, even on a bigger budget, or how does your agency know what is going on in your business? It is not for everyone though. If you do not have the capacity, skills, budget, time or inclination to do the strategy, you need to think about the way around that.

SEO is front-loaded but compounds

The one thing I want you to remember is how different this is to social media. Social media demands constant posting and interaction. SEO is front-heavy instead. There is lots to do upfront, but once done, the results compound. You are not posting all the time. You might create a new page once a month, or just go back through older pages. Particularly for a local business with various services, you might not need to blog at all. I talked about this in episode 131, why blogging might be a waste of your time. So much is now answered in the AI answers and overviews, so blogging is not always the way to go. We need unique content that shows our real human lived experience.

The upfront work is not always easy. Getting clear on your ideal client and the problems you solve, and putting that into clear language that connects with what people search for, takes thought. When I started The Website Growth Club I realised I needed to help members get clear on this first, so I added it as an early module. One of my members, Claire, said the Clarity Wizard made a huge difference to how she was thinking about her website and content, that things which were jumbled now felt clear and aligned, and she was excited to get back to work on her homepage. Getting clear on that part first has a knock-on effect through everything, whether you are networking or writing emails.

Showing up in AI search

Google is still over 90% of searches, but it would be good for our businesses to show up in AI search too, and we can start to see this in Google Analytics. Whereas Google used to give us ten blue links to choose from, now people ask longer questions and get one answer, which might contain links or none at all. If we want to be mentioned, our website needs to be set up so the AI bots can find us, and the fundamentals are 80% of what you would do for SEO anyway.

One email said keyword-by-keyword content planning needs to give way to topic ownership planning, and to stop asking what we want to rank for and start asking what topics we want AI systems to associate with us. To me that is still the same question. We still need our pages set up so the bots can read them, our content linked, and real depth on a topic. You could flip it and think about what question each page answers, or its purpose. That is what I map out in my Website Clarity Map, so your pages are not competing against each other, which still matters with the way AI bots crawl a site.

Showing your expertise and authority

Fundamentally, we need to show we are an expert in what we do. If you want to show up for a service in your location, you need to show your in-depth knowledge. That does not mean writing a hundred articles, but it does mean covering the topic well, including your own unique experience. If you have had cases where things went wrong, or you know that solving one problem often reveals another, talking about that on your page, a service page or a case study, is powerful because it shows real lived experience. But make sure you know what each page is doing for your business first. I am all about creating content that has a purpose, not content for the sake of it. That is part of my social media is optional philosophy.

We also build authority from other places online, and that does not have to mean social media. If you have social media channels you are stepping back from, just make sure they are still consistent with your current business, then leave them. If you have never been on a platform, there is no need to create an account for the sake of it. What is much more valuable in AI search is getting mentioned from places relevant to your industry and location. Do not ignore your local presence, even if you work online. If you are a member of your local chamber or associations, or you sponsor a local team, make sure they link back to you. Guest articles or speaking that earn a link from a higher authority website can make a big difference in AI search.

The Website Growth Club approach

In the Website Growth Club we focus on core pages first, your most important priority pages, so you are optimised to show up for what you sell. Those are your homepage, maybe your about page, and your most profitable products and services, starting with the most profitable first. Then you expand with supporting pages, additional services or case studies that build authority. You might then need some blogs, but many businesses do not, and if you do, you do it strategically, not churning out something an AI bot could have written. Even then, think about what your customers want to hear, which is your own experience and why it matters to them. Sometimes adding that information to a services page is enough.

Then we think about PR, getting others to mention your business, which you can do while working on your core pages. Podcast interviews, press, or events in your local area all count. That shows it is not just you saying you are the expert. People used to think they needed loads of top-of-funnel content for people who did not know what they did, which is where a lot of SEO starts with blogs. But those information-based queries are often answered in the AI overview and do not bring in people ready to buy. That is why I focus on core pages first. Someone searching for a trauma-informed therapist in their town is much further along the buyer's journey than someone searching why they wake up feeling anxious. If we focus on those commercial-intent searches first, it is much more likely to lead to a sale.

Front-loading the work

Going deep on a topic can feel overwhelming, but again the work is front-loaded. If you are the expert, and you are, this is all in your brain already. Sometimes it is just about getting it out of your head and into your infobase, so you have it to draw on every time you write an email, tweak your website or want some PR. You do the work once and everything else becomes easier. As small business owners we wear many hats, and our websites end up neglected while our marketing goes into things that do not make a difference. Social media feels like we are doing something, with those dopamine hits, but it is not compounding. The work you do on your website now pays dividends in three, six, nine, twelve months and beyond, and your Google Business Profile tied in with your website can be faster than that.

You are probably a lot less behind than you think. This can feel very techie and like a stretch to even start, but the biggest thing is deciding that you own your website, it is an asset, and you want to invest in it as the hub of your business. It will not get there overnight, and it does take time, and your first version will evolve. Mine certainly has, especially over the last few months doing the NatWest Accelerator and getting clear on my ideal clients and services. Doing this work yourself means the strategy is yours, which is non-negotiable for a small business owner, whether you do it with someone one-to-one or in the Growth Club. And whether you implement it yourself or pay someone, you are not beholden to an agency every single month. You end up in a much better position of control, actually understanding your marketing and taking charge of it. You cannot skip the SEO and go straight to being recommended in ChatGPT. I talk to so many business owners who assume their website is SEO friendly when the basics are not even in place, which is something you could quickly fix. Even looking at your homepage and most profitable pages, and checking your page titles, descriptions and headings, can make a massive difference.

Wrap-up and call to action

So if you are ready to have less reliance on social media, check out my website, thewebsitesuccesshub.com, and explore the Website Growth Club to see if it feels like the right path for you. And if you are not sure, book a discovery call and we can chat about where you are stuck, where you are trying to get to, and whether any of my products and services can help you get there faster. Thanks so much for listening, and do not forget, social media is optional.