TCC Podcast #183: The Ins and Outs of SEO with Meg Casebolt

SEO Consultant (and reformed web designer) Meg Casebolt is our guest for the 183rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Since this is an area that we don't have real deep knowledge in, we asked Meg all about what copywriters need to know about SEO and what they should be trying to rank for. And we spent a lot of time talking about the 3-week challenge she put together last year and how it helped grow her list. Here's a pretty good list of what we covered: •  how she went from graphic design to SEO—it’s about grabbing opportunity •  what she did to learn SEO in the first place •  what she did to work through the pivot from design to SEO •  Meg’s advice for anyone working through their own pivot (or choosing a niche) •  how she ramped up her client acquisition after the first few referrals •  the best thing she’s done to grow her authority since her pivot •  the surprising thing that scared Meg as she was running her challenge •  how she ran her challenge and how she engaged her affiliates •  why her challenge took off (and why people joined in the middle) •  how she structured her challenge from start to finish •  the results that participants got as they went through the program •  how Meg kept people engaged in the Challenge from start to finish •  why adding a deadline helped people finish their Challenge assignments •  why she no longer does PPC as part of her services •  what a copywriter needs to know about SEO and getting online traffic •  why you shouldn’t try to rank for a term like “copywriter” •  the importance of putting great content on your own website •  how she has dealt with mindset issues around working with clients •  the end-product she provides clients after a consulting session •  why she decided to rebrand her services as she grew her team •  what her team looks like today and where Meg spends her time We covered a lot of ground in this one. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don't miss an episode.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Tanya Geisler SEOctober MemberVault Meg’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Kira:  This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, the 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Rob:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira:  You're invited to join the club for Episode 183 as we chat with SEO strategist, Meg Casebolt about planning and writing search friendly content, why SEO needs to be a part of your marketing mix, what it takes to run a month-long challenge as well as the results she got and why has she rebranded and refocused her business solely on SEO. Welcome Meg. Rob:   Hey, Meg. Meg:  Hey, it's so nice to be here with you guys. Kira:  Yeah, it's great to have you here. I've been able to get to know you over the last nine months or so through Tanya Geisler and I'm excited to just dig into your business more and talk about a lot of the changes that you've made and challenges that you've taken on, so let's kick it off with your story. How did you get into SEO? Meg:  Okay, so my story is, I think a pretty common one, which is that I had been working in communications for many years. I worked in nonprofits. I worked at an architecture firm for a couple of years doing all of their marketing. I got married, I got pregnant, and I looked at the cost of childcare and I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but I swore. So I kind of had to make this decision about how do I want to spend my time, how do I want to make money and I'd been sort of dabbling in freelance graphic design. Actually, when I was working in the nonprofits, I wrote grants to take classes to teach myself design for the nonprofits because nonprofit folks are always very resourceful like that. And so I've been freelancing a little bit on the side, just kind of playing around with my personal copy of Adobe Illustrator, and I went, ‘I wonder if I can make this work?’ And then I reconnected with some old friends. My first corporate client was literally my first grade best friend. My first subcontracting client was my next door neighbor from my childhood. And they both were huge experiences and really great companies to work for and so it kind of just took off on its own once I started to pursue this route of being a designer. And it was easy then for me to leave my job and stay home with my son part-time and sent him to daycare part-time, and that was kind of just how the business began. It happened a little bit naturally and kind of stumbling around which I think happens to a lot of us. And then in terms of moving into SEO, I went from being a graphic designer, I started getting hired for more web projects, so I taught myself WordPress design, and worked my way through those clients. And I felt like I was working with clients on their brand and on their logos and on their websites and on their social presence. And I would launch these beautiful sites for my clients, and they would say, ‘Well, that's great, Meg,’ but nobody's finding me for this. And I was like, ‘Well, that wasn't part of the scope of work.’ We didn't talk about search, we talked about brand and positioning and voice and copy and all of the things that go into the website, but I had no idea how SEO played into it. But I didn't want my clients to be like disappointed with the money that they invested in me, so I started playing with SEO on the side essentially, and figuring it out on my own site and trying out new things. And I reached out to a number of designers that I just was friends with and I said, ‘Guys, how do you balance this building the website and doing the design and knowing the branding, and then also doing all the technical stuff that you need to do and the keyword research and the mobile friendliness and all the SEO stuff.’ And they were like, ‘Oh, God. It's the worst. Wait a minute, do you want to do the SEO stuff, Meg? I would hire you to do it for me.’ And that's how I found my niche. It wasn't an exhaustive list of what are all the different things you can do in design, it wasn't let me figure out the niche and then market myself into it. Every evolution that I have found in my business has been accidentally stumbling into a conversation with somebody or an opening, or some sort of opportunity, and then seeing the opportunity grabbing it and running with it. Rob:   That is an awesome story, so what did you do then to learn SEO? Because obviously, you're very resourceful as you taught yourself all of these skills and if somebody else were thinking, ‘Hey, I want to learn that.’ Where did you go? What resources did you use? How did you actually add that skill to your skill stack, so to speak? Meg:  Oh, man, I wish I had like one resource where I could say go here and take this course. Well, now, I can because I teach it, but no, it wasn't really a linear progress kind of thing. This was just me going to Google or going to YouTube every time I had a question and figuring it out and trying it out and seeing what works. So, absolutely not the fastest or most efficient way to learn something, but sometimes that's the best way to learn it, it's just to put it into practice and give it a shot. Kira:  So Meg, I want to hear more about the pivot that you made and kind of leaving design and then focusing on SEO, at least that's the way it sounds. How did you work through that pivot? Did you eventually leave design? Well, I know you did, but how soon did you leave design completely to focus on SEO? How long does that take and what's realistic there? Meg:  Yeah, I think the pivots don't necessarily have to be 90-degree or 180-degree turns. I think that they could be 10 degrees, 10 degrees, 10 degrees, 10 degrees. And so I started rewriting the copy of my website to be web design and SEO, and then once I put that onto the website, I started getting more SEO inquiries, and just leaning more heavily onto those leads. And I remember the day that I took the words web design off my website, I was sweating because I knew that I wanted to always have that as a backup plan. And that's not to say that now I couldn't go design a website, I'm sure I still could, but it's not as lucrative or as systematized or as you know, fun for me as doing more of the nuanced work, more of that niche component. Kira:  Yeah, can you talk more about this, too, because you felt that anxiety around taking web design off your website, I feel like a lot of the copywriters we talked to want to niche down and want to kind of make that 10-degree pivot, but they are feeling that anxiety over like, ‘If I make a change, this is it for me.’ And so even if they know that's not rational, I feel like we still deal with that. So what advice would you give to them if they are maybe shifting a bit to maybe taking something off their website for the first time and freaking out, what advice would you give them? Meg:  Yeah, I think that the advice that I would give them and also the advice that I give to people who are working on their SEO, regardless of what you are thinking about, is maybe you don't have to take everything off your website overnight. You can still keep those kind of generic keywords on your homepage or on your about page, you can still kind of cast a broad net there,