SEO tips for Beginners: Expert Insights from Sarah McDowell for Amplified Reach -12

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Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:00

Welcome to Authenticity Amplified, your resource for attracting and connecting to your ideal client. The ideal podcast for mindset, messaging, marketing, and podcasting for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, a fellow entrepreneur and founder of the Authentic Connections Podcast Network. I'm excited to learn alongside you and share with you bits of my experience, but it may further the conversation. Today, I'm honored to introduce you to Sarah McDowell. She's a SEO manager for the Captivate podcast host. They are amazing. They're one of the top hosting companies.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:30

And she is also the host of the SEO mindset podcast. What I appreciate about Sarah is how approachable she is and and how great she is at answering questions. She's very helpful. She's also has her own podcast community in the UK, which is very exciting because she's very supportive of the podcasting community. So welcome to Authenticity Amplified, Sarah. I'm glad you're here.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:00:51

Thank you so much for having me, and what a welcome that was.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:55

Hey. I'm just getting used to the flow, but we try to be welcoming. We try to be welcoming at the very least.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:00:59

Very welcoming. Very welcoming. I feel like I'm blushing a little bit.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:04

Oh, I like that. I like blushing, but we need a little color to start the show with. Right? We we do. We definitely do. Especially the balance because I'm all the way on the West Coast of the US, and you're all the way in the UK. So it's dark where you are even though it's I mean not even noon yet where I am. It is very dark.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:01:19

I mean, I have got lights around me to try and, you know, amplify the face.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:27

You're doing a good job with that. You've actually done that pretty well. I'm impressed because that's not easy. That's not easy. When it gets dark here, my lighting does not work well at all. So you're doing right. So with my opening question, we like to try to do this balance cause we know you're a hard worker. Working with podcasting is, you know, hard work sometimes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:42

But remind us of the beautiful things you work for. So what is the best vacation you've ever been on?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:01:48

Oh, my days. Okay. Can I can I answer with 2?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:53

Oh, even better. Yes.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:01:54

So one of my best holidays was just when I finished university, and I wasn't quite ready to, you know, get into having a job and doing proper adulting just yet. So I was like, I need to have a bit of fun. So me and a couple of friends did New York and Canada, which was very exciting.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:19

Nice. Like Montreal, part of Canada? What part of Canada?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:02:22

Yes. So we did like a little tour. So there was Montreal in there, there was Ottawa, Toronto, because that's where my auntie lives. And there was somewhere else that I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but, yeah, it was an awesome an awesome break.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:43

So, yeah.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:02:44

That was amazing. So there there was that holiday. And then another one was when me and my girlfriend went to Sicily last year. So that was beautiful, Absolutely stunning.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:58

When you have people that are working in these industries, we need to be reminded that there is breaks, and it's important to have holidays and breaks. So I'm glad that you got to share that. And I call it vacation, not holiday because you call it holiday. Right?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:03:09

Yes. It is holiday in the UK.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:11

Yes. This is a holiday. Yes. I love that. I I love that, And, yeah, I didn't call it that. No, at all. Not at all. It works.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:17

It works. And then we also do wisdom worth sharing. So what is the advice that you have been given that has made the largest impact on your career?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:03:26

I love these questions.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:27

Yeah. We we were gonna get to the SEO, but we gotta, like, get to know you a little bit and get

Sarah McDowell [: 00:03:31

I know.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:32

Dig in. Listeners. Dig in deep. Dig in deep here.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:03:36

Okay. My advice is don't be afraid to say yes to new experiences and Oh. Opportunities. Okay? Like, there has been times in my career where I've put off saying yes to something because I'm scared. Right? And it's human nature be to be scared of new things. Okay? Because we don't know what that experience is like. We don't know whether we're gonna like it. We don't know we're gonna be any good at it.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:04:04

So there has been times where that fear has got in the way of me saying yes or me delaying me saying yes. Because at the end of the day, you're either going to love it or you're gonna hate it. If you hate this new experience or this new opportunity or whatever it is, just don't do it again. Whereas you might, right, or you might actually really love it. And if you hadn't have said yes in the first place, you would have never known that this is your one of your new things or one of these things that actually you're really passionate about and you're really good at it. So don't be afraid to say yes to new things. Yes, it's scary, but 9 times out of 10, the fear of something has always been much worse than the actual doing. So that would be my advice.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:52

I like that. I like that. And you can always say no later. So just because you say yes at the start doesn't mean you can't say no later. And say yes to see where it goes. I like it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:02

I like it. That's very valuable. Thank you. So now to jump into SEO. And we're gonna start because we have all different levels of our listeners. So let's start with SEO and what it stands for. Great question.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:05:17

So SEO stands for search engine optimization. So it is it sounds a bit lingoy, and it is a big word there. But basically, how I'd explain what SEO is, is there are certain things that you can do to a website and pages to optimize it so that when people are searching for relevant terms or queries in Google, search engines like Google, your site is shown or your pages or your content is shown to that person who's searching for a relevant term. Now Google has another swanky word, an algorithm. So basically, an algorithm is you just gotta think of it like a checklist. So basically, when Google is looking at what pages or what content or what to show to someone based on what they have searched, they have, like, a little checklist that they go through, and they basically, like, tick things off. And they're like, okay. This is a good page or content to show to this person for this term.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:06:21

So does that answer that question?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:06:23

Yes. And so when we think of search engine optimization and search engines, so Google is a search engine. Should we also be thinking of things like LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter? Like, are is everything search engines? Is Apple Podcasts a search engine? Are these all search engines? Or should we just try to limit our thinking to Google to make it simpler to kind of grasp all of this?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:06:45

I mean, that is a very good question. I need to stop saying that, don't I? Every question that you come at me with, that is a great question.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:06:52

Well, I might actually start another podcast, but that's a very good question because I get that a lot.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:06:55

That is a great question. So that is a tricky one to answer because obviously, there are different search engines out there. And like you said, like YouTube is a search engine. LinkedIn is a search engine. Social media podcast platforms are a search engine, but I don't want people to feel overwhelmed at the same time. Right? Because if you're casting your net too wide or you're spreading yourself too thin, then you're not gonna get the the results or what you're wanting to just because you don't have enough time to focus on everything. So what I would suggest is finding out where your audience are, where are they hanging out.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:07:41

Okay? And put your efforts into that into that space. And I'd recommend focusing on so say, for example, you're like, okay, I want to focus on Google. Okay? I know that people, 9 times out of 10, if someone has a question or they wanna search something, they're gonna go to Google. So that's where I'm gonna focus. Yeah?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:08:03

Yeah.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:08:04

So get yourself set up and focus on that. And then once you've got to a place where you're happy, you're getting traffic from that search engine, and you've got a good strategy, by all means, then go and look at other places like your apps, like LinkedIn, like YouTube. But I'd just be mindful about spreading yourself too thin, and also don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do too much at one time.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:08:32

Yes. And starting with because they're like the mac daddy. Like, they're a big place to start, and they do. So Google does search YouTube and it does search LinkedIn and it does search all those places. So they're like the largest search engine, I would think. And so they're the big one to start with and understanding what their needs are is the best place to start. And then maybe more specific.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:08:54

A 100%. So two things to say there. So you must have seen it when you are searching on Google. Sometimes you get like a video carousel, and that video carousel is being pulled from YouTube. So we know that Google, it's not just video carousels, they'll pull in image carousels or different types of things. Like, if you compare if you look at a Google search engine results page now and compare it to 10 years ago, it is so different. It's so different. Yeah? Yeah.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:09:27

So, yeah, so it's great advice on the on YouTube to focus there because we know that YouTube is being shown in the search engine results pages. And, also, I just want to share a stat with why it's also a good idea to, like, look into, a search engine like Google. So the keyword best podcasts alone gets just under 65 100 hang on. I can't say this word out loud. 63.9,000 monthly searches. Okay? Wow. Best podcast is the term? So the term, just on its own, best podcasts gets on average 63,900 global searches per month. That's on a monthly basis, and that's just one standalone keyword.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:10:19

So that is your opportunity. So people I know from that stat that people are going to Google to search for podcasts as well. So, like, best SEO podcasts, best business podcasts. So there's a stat to share with you there. My brain, it is late in the evening. So when I first saw that number, I was like, am I saying that right? But hopefully, I have.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:10:44

Yes. Yes. You have. So two things from that. One thing is that keywords and this is the thing that is important for folks to understand that keywords are actually phrases and combinations of words a lot of the time, which I think is something that for me has been important to understand and to get in my head that, like, it's not just, like, the word. It's a combination of words sometimes that you're actually trying to do for SEO, not just a word. And so that's, like, as you're trying to identify what your keywords are, that is a combination of words or a phrase sometimes as well. Correct?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:11:19

Yes. And what a really good opportunity for podcasts are. So, they're called long tail keywords in the industry. And what that means is just, so usually, when you're talking about keywords, it's up to about 3 words in that search term. A long tail keyword is basically a phrase. So it's usually above 3 words, but it's like people asking a question or like a longer tail thing. So for example, how do I do podcast SEO, for example. So that would be a longer tail keyword.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:11:53

And something to consider as well is pages will rank for loads of different keywords. So whilst it's important to, know the main keyword that you're focusing on, what you've got to remember is that you've got to think of it on a topic level. So it's not just the standalone keyword, but synonyms. So keywords that are related to that main keyword and, like, related terms, And, a page can rank for many different keywords because we're humans, and we search, and we go to Google and type in different things, don't we? How you would search stuff on Google is gonna be different to how I search stuff on Google.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:12:35

Yes. Exactly. And so with part of that so as much as we have, like, you know, 64,000 searches a month for best podcast, like, my podcast showing up as best podcast is not as likely to happen when there's, you know, so many podcasts out there. So how do you balance finding keywords that are being looked at a lot and finding keywords that aren't as populated by everyone trying to be that keyword?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:13:09

So something that you've always got to bear in mind is relevancy. Okay? So how relevant is that keyword to what you're being? How relevant is that keyword to your podcast episode or a page on your podcast website, for example? Okay? Relevancy is always key. Something to bear in mind is obviously the more broader a keyword is, obviously the higher volume of searches it's gonna have. Yeah? So for example, SEO podcast. Right? That's gonna have a relatively high search volume because it's general. It's very it's top level. But what you've got to consider is because it's very general, you don't really know what someone is searching for in regards to that. So what is better is to niche down, or you guys say niche.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:13:58

Is that right? Niche down? I say niche.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:02

And I definitely hear it said differently. And so then I'm, like, am I saying it right or wrong? And I didn't know. I have the UK or English thing. So maybe that's what it is. But I say niche. But I definitely hear it say different ways.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:14:11

I've heard niche. It just reminds me of itch, and, I always get a bit itchy whenever I say it. But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent again. So relevancy. So, yeah, what I would do is niche down. So your longer tail keywords or your longer phrases, yes, they're gonna not get as much search volume, monthly search volume, but they're gonna be specific to what someone wants to learn about or what someone wants to find out about whatever they're searching for. And if you have a podcast episode that is related to that really niche targeted keyword, you're gonna get a better success rate because people are more likely going to check your podcast episode out because you are so relevancy a 100% there. Like, you are given what people want, if that makes sense.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:15:04

Yeah? Yeah. So in my so in my network and the Authentic Connections podcast network, when I work with my clients, like, we actually identify, like, what are the keywords that connect to your podcast to you? Because I work with mostly entrepreneurs with your business. Like, what are the keywords that your clients, your customers? Because it's podcast like, how do you find like, what is your way of, like, connecting your dog whistle way of, like, getting under, like, how what are the words? What are the ways they're gonna know you're speaking to them? And we try to find what those words are and find the ways we can insert them into titles of episodes into, like, the different ways we're doing the descriptions. And so, really, you need to have a podcast website or you need to have a place that you're putting those things so that it can be searchable and findable and they can be pulled out really. Right? Oh, a 100%.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:15:49

A 100%. And I am a big fan of repurposing your podcast episodes and the content that you have. So there is a bit of a debate in the industry whether or not search engines like Google are automatically transcribing your audio. If they are automatically transcribing your audio, they are a machine at the end of the day and they're going to get it wrong. But 9 times out of 10, they're not going to get it a 100% correct, are they? So I suppose there's 2 points here. One thing that I always recommend is repurposing your content. So when you're recording a podcast episode, you've got great content that you can use and you can transcribe that audio and rework it into a blog and post that on your on your website. You can't just sort of transcribe it and then copy and paste and put that on as a blog because you need to tidy it up.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:16:49

You need to give it a structure. You need give it subheadings. You need to remove the filler words. It needs to be a blog at the end of the day. Okay? But what's great about that is say that you've done that and you've posted that blog on your website, you could also, on top of that, embed your player so people can listen. So someone will stumble across that article thinking it's just a blog, but then when they scroll up, they're like, oh, actually, this is a podcast. Oh, I've never heard of this podcast. Oh, I actually prefer consuming content by listening to it rather by reading it, and you've got yourself another listener.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:17:29

So that's just an example of how you can boost your discoverability with repurposing your content. There's also an argument about how important transcriptions are for your for your podcast. So the where you have however you show your podcast episodes on your website, you should have a podcast website, and each episode should have its own individual page. And on that page, you need to have a transcription of your podcast episode because a transcription is important for accessibility, and accessibility is important and we should be doing that anyway. But it again also helps Google understand what your podcast and what your episode and what you're about. Because I've I said earlier about Google, they could be automatically transcribed, but they might not be getting it quite right. So it's really important that when you do transcribe, that you tidy up your transcription as well to make it easy. Because when Google is looking at the page, you need to help them out, basically.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:18:33

You need to give them as much useful information so they can understand, okay, this is what this page is about. This is what this episode is about. Okay. This is relevant for this search term that someone is searching for, if that makes sense.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:18:47

Yes. A couple questions. So with a lot of the podcast hosts that we use, and including Captivate, there's a way that you can have your transcript. So if you go to the player that they give you or the podcast website they provide that has the transcription is available is there. But that transcription is not available to Google and that transcription is not a support for SEO purposes?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:19:09

So just to check that I've got the question right. So in the web player, I have, like, you can select the transcription and it shows on the player?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:19:18

Yes. If you've inserted it into yeah. So with all the different stuff, with Buzzsprout, with Captivate, with all these folks, like because I know that for accessibility purposes, I've always made sure no matter where I've been that there's a transcript available and we've checked it. But it's just inside the player or inside that. So it's not on a separate page for the podcast, and it's not something I've entered separately on a page for a podcast. It's something it's like a knockdown, a player.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:19:42

Yes. So how I handle that with my podcast is because I use Captivate, shout out to Captivate, because I upload my transcript. Like you say, it's available on the player, But also because I have a, a Captivate website enabled and each of my episodes have their own unique page, I have the transcription, available within the text, within the content on the page, so it's easy for Google to access crawl, and see it there. So I would just do it just to be on the safe side because you never know.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:20:17

It's not being crawled when it's inside of a player. So if you wanna actually have it for SEO purposes, you need to pull it out separately. And is that something that you can automate through a bunch of the systems? Or that's something you just have to pull it out yourself manually?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:20:30

Well, I'd, so because I use, captivate websites, and that's just a button that I've toggled. So yes, I want to captivate website. It does it for me automatically. So as long as I've uploaded my transcript within the host, it will then show it on my episode page.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:20:49

Gotcha. Okay. So it's just the settings before you do that. So if you have a website player through your just make sure you have it so you can see when you go to the website, you actually see.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:20:58

Yes. I would do that to be on the safe side. I'm not a 100% sure whether Google would call it if it's on the player. I'm not a 100% sure, but I just be safe. Okay? Make it super easy for Google and other search engines as well. And you've also got to think about your users as well. Like, some people might not think to look on the web player as they're scrolling the page. Whereas if it's just there, bam, in front of them, they can see it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:21:25

Yes. That makes perfect sense. Definitely. That's very helpful. So making a separate blog post that you actually are condensing the information, making it very digestible that has the information on it, making it so the transcript is potentially available to be crawled and to get the information out of our all things that are are helpful. And do you also, like, make sure that you're using your keywords? Show descriptions aren't used inside podcast players. Like, Apple Podcasts doesn't necessarily use that as something they're using as in their search engine pieces. But on your website, when you have podcast description, to make sure you're using the keywords and phrases that are important is probably part of Helping with that as well.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:22:04

Yes. So I would recommend that everyone gets themselves some sort of keyword research tool. So what a keyword research tool will do is you input a topic or an idea, and this keyword research tool will give you, okay, this is what people are searching for in search engines like Google, and this is the average monthly search volume. Obviously, it's just a guesstimate. Like, they've got data. It can be more and less, but it gives you, like, an average monthly search volume so you know and you've got a benchmark. Now there's loads of tools out there. Just go to Google and type best keyword research tools out there, and there'll be like, list of calls out there where websites have reviews so you can check them out and compare them. Some are free, some are paid for.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:22:53

Basically, the ones that you pay for, you just get more fancy features, but you don't need to worry. At this stage, all you need a free version will be absolutely fine for you because all you need to know is, okay, this is the keyword, and this is the search volume. Okay? So don't worry. You can go free. Don't pay for 1 if you don't need to. Every podcaster should be using a keyword research tool to help them plan their episodes. Because by using a keyword research tool, you know what people are searching for. So while you're planning out your episodes, you might come across a query or a term, a synonym, so related to that topic or what you're looking at, that you hadn't even thought about in the first place.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:23:42

And you can be, actually, that's a really good topic for me to delve into. Or maybe as you're planning it out, you're actually like, oh, actually, this is a quite heavy topic, and I need to split it it out into a part 1, part 2, part 3. So always use a keyword research tool to help you identify and find, like, what people are searching for. 2 free ones on the top of my head that I would recommend using, AnswerThePublic and also Ask. They're awesome free tools. And, yeah, like, you just put in a topic idea, and it will give you back so many ideas and suggestions of what you should be talking about or what you should be, like, planning your episodes around. And then when it comes to where you're using your keywords, get it in your episode title, use it in your show description, use headers, and put it in your header of your show show description. Within Captivate, you can also for your individual episodes, you can put your meta page title and your meta description in there as well so so you can get your keyword in there.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:24:55

One word of warning is don't keyword stuff. So this is a bit of a old school tactic that used to work back in the day, but obviously Google has got much more sophisticated. So keyword stuffing is where you literally so say you've got a podcast episode title and you've literally listed out, like, keywords and synonyms of that of that keyword. Right? Google doesn't like that. Listener apps have cracked down on it as well. Places like Apple, they don't like it, and it's not gonna be helpful for your users. Yeah? So SEO should never get in the way of your users and user experience. So don't keyword stuff.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:25:35

Like your title, your show description, all of these things still need to make sense. But just a word of warning, don't list out loads of cinnamon or keyword stuff so it just so you're just getting a keyword in there for keyword sake. Obviously, get it in there if you can, but it needs to still be quality. Do you know what I mean? It still needs to make sense.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:25:55

So with your your website and putting things onto your website, so when you put an image on there, you can have the option of putting information and data about the image, which then brings up, like, on Google search around images. So when you're putting things on there, like, if you do have specific episode photos or just photos in general on your website, is it good to put information in there so people when it Googles is Google actually searching those tags that you insert when you're putting things on your website? So should it say that it's a photo of and tells about the photo in a way that that has keywords that connect it. So even though it's a guest, like, so if I had it for this episode, should it say, like, you know, photo of Sarah McDowell, SEO expert, and Shauna Rodriguez, podcast expert or whatever it is, entrepreneur and podcast expert. Because, you know, entrepreneur podcast, SEO, like, those things are in there as well, instead of just saying, like, photo of 2 women. Like, you know, would you want to have that type of stuff in your images so that it's actually bringing images that would connect? Yes. Is that helpful?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:26:55

So the lingo, the terminology is your image alt tag. So the whole reason an image alt tag exists, again, is for accessibility reasons. So the reason that they're there is, say, for example, someone has a screen reader, because they have issues with their site, they have the image alt tag, a screen reader will read it out. So then someone knows, okay, this is what that image is. I can't see it, but there's a description of what it is. So back in the day, SEOs would just spam the hell out of everything. So as soon as someone heard that Google looks at keywords in your page title, Google looks at keywords in your image alt tag, Like, they just take this information and then spam it. Okay? So obviously, that's not useful for users.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:27:47

It's not useful for accessibility. So obviously, Google has cracked down on these kind of practices. So when it comes to your image alt tag, you should definitely always use it to describe what's going on in the image. If you can get a keyword in there and it makes sense, so in your example, a 100%, because you're explaining what that picture is. However, if you had a picture of, I don't know, a cup of coffee, and you were like, Sarah, SEO expert, that coffee do you know what I mean?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:28:17

Like Yes. Exactly.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:28:19

It always comes down to relevancy and is it relevant to put in. So if it makes sense and you can get the keyword in there because that keyword actually describes the picture, then hell yeah. You do that. Big yes. Big tip.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:28:34

But I don't think a a cup of coffee once drink by Sean, an entrepreneur, does not that doesn't do it. That doesn't describe what actually it is. Even though.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:28:44

No, no. Exactly. Exactly. So if you're clutching at straws to get a keyword in, or again, like you don't want to be listing out keywords, so you won't want to say Sarah McDowell, SEO expert, SEO specialist, search engine optimization strategy. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Yes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:29:02

If it's a scene, say what it is, but don't torture the person who's actually using a screen reader. You have to listen to your ridiculousness? Like, find the best way to say what it is in a way that would actually connect to somebody who's doing a search as well.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:29:17

And just always remember what the purpose, like, image alt tags are there for accessibility and to describe an image. Okay? So that's what you should do.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:29:28

That's perfect. That's very helpful. And that's the same thing. It's, so on a different podcast I've listened to once, they just said that when you do your, the name of who the guest is, which is available in some different podcast hosts, and when you do the name of the host, which is available in all podcast, hosting companies, that you should put that type of information. Instead of just saying, like, Shauna Rodriguez is the host, it should be Shauna Rodriguez blah blah blah blah. And some of them got ridiculous with stuffing on that. And then I also heard somewhere else that somebody had fallout because they did too much stuffing on that with, with our podcast. So what is that balance? Like, it should it's fine for it to say, like, Sarah MacDowell, SEO manager for Captivate or something like that.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:30:13

Like, it's okay to have some of that type of stuff in there, but it doesn't say it to 10 different ways to get A 100%.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:30:20

Yeah. Okay. You've got it. You've got it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:30:22

Okay. That is so valuable. I love that. And we're to the point where we need to wrap things up. So do you have anything specific that you wanna make sure we get in before we kinda go to our wrap up questions?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:30:35

I suppose the biggest thing is I think some people can be scared when they hear the word SEO or search engine optimization because it feels, what is this thing? It's scary. And once you know what you're doing, and once you've had practice, and once you start experimenting and doing some things, you're going to get more comfortable with it. And it's not rocket science at the end of the day. Yes, like with anything, if you don't know about something, there is going to be that learning curve And you need to be kind to yourself and give yourself time to learn this new thing. Yeah? Mhmm. But once you've grappled with the basics and you start understanding and because a big thing as well is I hate lingo. I hate business lingo. I hate business talk.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:31:25

Acronyms, love hate relationship, where everything's shortened for no apparent reason just because. But once you've understand the lingo, understand what's what and what's going on, it makes a whole lot of sense. It makes a whole lot of sense. And at the end of the day, what Google wants to do is give its users the best possible content it can for whatever that person has searched for. So as long as you are focusing on that and you're not doing anything that's, like, spammy or you're doing something to trick Google, you'll be fine.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:32:02

No tricks. I like it. I definitely like it. I like it. Thank you. That's very helpful. So as we just kinda wrap things up because, again, Authenticity Amplified is a podcast. And so can you give us an example of someone in your life who you think is very authentic in how they present themselves, and what about do you think represents authenticity?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:32:22

Oh.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:32:23

Yes. I know we're shift we're shifting gears a little bit, but that's kinda we wanna we wanna wrap around to that that point about authenticity.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:32:31

I don't know if this is a cop out, but can I say my girlfriend?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:32:35

Absolutely. Yes. And we love that you have a girlfriend who's authentic. Yes.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:32:43

Yes. A 100%. A 100%. My girlfriend, Tash, she has a tutoring business. And her tutoring business, her focus is supporting children with SEND, so, Special Educational Needs. And the reason why I'm saying Tash is she is so authentic. So the whole reason her business exists is because she was a trained teacher, and she didn't like the the strictness and the, like, how how teaching was done in in a sense of there's no room for creativity or, like, if you've got ADHD, if you've got autism, if you've got any special educational need, that that's a barrier and she didn't like that. So her business is all about supporting kids and showing them that if you've got these different things, it's not a barrier. Actually, you have superpowers. So for example, if you've got ADHD, there's times where you go in focus mode. I think I got that wrong, but she's so authentic in her business and how she teaches and how and how she inspires children and stuff.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:33:55

And she's just a great example of someone who sticks to being herself. And it's just it works. And the amount of kids that she's helped and, like, get awesome grades and things like that. And it's just great to see the relationships that she's having and yeah. So I don't know if it makes me, like, pass me the sick bucket because I'm saying my girlfriend, but yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:34:21

No. I love it. I love it that she's that she's an entrepreneur and she has her business type of thing. You know what I mean? This is her business. And so I think that speaks even better that you found somebody who's in business for themselves and being who they are and expressing that authentically has led them into this career for themselves and this work that they do.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:34:35

Yeah. That's a 100%. She's perfect. 100%. And it shows like her business has grown. Like, she's been going for, like, 5 years and gets bigger and bigger. And I think that comes from authenticity in the relationships that you kind of have. And it's always a reminder of because I think when I first got into SEO or any career, I was like, oh, it needs to be professional, serious, Sarah, all the time when not at all. Like, authenticity is we're all humans at the end of the day.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:35:07

We all need to connect with one another. Like, if something that I've got better at is and going off on a tangent again, but if someone doesn't like me and I'm being authentic and it's me, then that's their problem. Do you know what I mean? Yeah?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:35:24

Yeah. And that's what it's about is authentically amplifying who you are is how you're gonna find your clients and find the people you're supposed to be working with and then,

Sarah McDowell [: 00:35:30

Exactly. Exactly.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:35:32

You are right on key.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:35:34

And if you are trying to be someone that you're not, you're gonna attract the wrong people, and it's not gonna it's just gonna end not very well. So, yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:35:43

Yeah. The way that you grow and find the right people is by being genuinely who you are.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:35:47

And being you is wonderful. There's no issues with anyone. Like, all your quirks and all that lovely stuff that makes you wonderful.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:35:56

Yes. That is perfect. Awesome. So then we need our real world application, which I do believe is for folks to go check out to find themselves an SEO tool for them to start using. And you mentioned so I use Answer the Public. I love Answer the Public, actually. It's nice because of the way they arrange things and stuff too. So Answer the Public, and you did also asked.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:36:16

Is that the other one that you named?

Sarah McDowell [: 00:36:18

Yes. So the difference between Answer the Public and also asked is so also asked takes its data from, you know, people also ask in search engine results. Yeah. Yeah. So when you search for something and you get yeah. So that's where that tool populates its data from. Whereas AnswerThePublic, that's a little bit different because, you know, when you're typing into Google and it will auto suggest a term or a keyword, that's where Answer the Public gets its data from. So they're a little bit differently different in where they pull their data from.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:36:53

I don't know if that's helpful.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:36:55

That's very helpful. Yeah. So for everyone for their application to find, they'd already have an SEO tool they use to find a tool that they can use and start another tool. Can I just say one more tool? Yes. We love tools. Yeah. Tell us.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:37:07

So so a cracking tool that is free is Google Search Console. Oh, I haven't heard of that one. Yeah. So Google Search Console is great because you've got Google Analytics, yeah, that most people will be aware of, of like gives you sort of data and measurements of, like, how well your site is doing clicks and impressions and all that sort of stuff. Google Search Console is similar, but it also gives you data on how you can improve your website. So with Google Search Console, you can see what pages Google is having an issue with. Yeah? And you can also see you get more data because in Google Analytics, you don't get much data on keywords, because a lot of it will be hidden. You get data within Google Search Console, so you can see what terms your and episodes are coming up for as well.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:38:03

So it's great for monitoring your website and seeing if there's any issues and Google can't access a page or there's something going on, or you've got broken URLs or what have you. It's a really awesome tool to keep that monitored and so you can fix it. But you can also see, okay, I'm ranking quite well. I'm getting good clicks and traffic from these keywords. What can I do? Can I optimize more? Can I do more, like, episodes or things like that? But, yeah, Google Search Console, it's free, and everyone should be using it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:38:35

That was beautiful. I love it. So how can people find you? Tell us how people can find you if they wanna connect with you more. I'm a hermit. You can't find me anywhere. No. I'm joking. No.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:38:45

It's Other than that podcast, other than, you know, details.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:38:49

So a couple of ways, obviously on different social media channels, mostly active, I'd say on Twitter and LinkedIn. On Twitter, I am sarahmcduk, but my friend pointed out that it also stands for Sarah McDuk.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:39:05

That's easy to remember. Very memorable.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:39:07

Easy to remember. Or if you just search Sarah McDowell on LinkedIn, that might be a quite common name. Type Sarah McDowell SEO in LinkedIn, and I'm sure I'll come up. Also, my podcast, the SEO mindset. So just quickly about can I just quickly talk about the SEO mindset? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:39:25

The SEO mindset is it gives personal growth and career development tips to SEO professionals. So what we found was there's lots of great podcasts out there that tell you how to do SEO, but what we were finding, me and my co host, the wonderful Tazmin Solomon, was that there was a lot of people suffering with anxiety, burnout, imposter syndrome. So our podcast looks at those kind of topics. And then to be fair, I have a few friends who don't work in SEO, but they listen to my podcast because we're talking about these kind of subjects that are related to everyone, like how to get a pay rise, how to say no, knowing what your boundaries are, how to have a healthy work life balance. The only thing is that when we give examples, it's an example in the SEO industry. I've got so many friends who have, like, listened to a podcast episode that don't work in SEO, and they've said it's really helped them. So

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:40:27

check it out. Yes. Check it out. Definitely. Thank you so much. I love that you were here with us today. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah McDowell [: 00:40:33

I feel honored to be asked. I've had a whale of a time and, yes. Well, I hope this episode has been helpful for your listeners.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:40:44

I'm sure it has. And 80% of small businesses may be solo partners, but that doesn't mean you have to do it alone. And that goes for podcasters too. It can be very solo. So I'm here every single week, and I hope you will be too. Thank you for joining us.