IAM2183 – Understanding the Content You Create to Gain Attention for your Business – Part 2
Special Episode with Michelle Calloway
In this second part of the special episode, Gresh highlights the importance of high-quality content and effective SEO strategies are emphasized.
Gresh shares insights on creating ‘sticky' content through blogs and videos, and discusses the benefits of being featured on other media platforms to support the eight business pillars his content focuses on.
He highlights the value of targeting niche markets, maintaining consistent content publishing, and leveraging off-page SEO strategies such as backlinks from reputable sources.
The episode underlines the importance of understanding keywords, utilizing meta descriptions, and ensuring web content accessibility while building a long-term SEO strategy. Practical advice on SEO and content creation for small businesses is provided throughout the discussion.
Gresham’s primary website (where you can find links to all of his services and resources).
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Transcription:
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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00
I always say that content is royalty. So making sure that you have quality content is going to be one of the biggest things. And, and I think the content is something that is like sticky paper for people that are searching. So I talked about the blogs, I talked about videos, I talked about all those things.
And it's so important to have that sticky paper on your site. Generally speaking, the more pages and posts you have the more sticky paper you have, the more likely somebody is going to be attracted to.
Intro 00:27
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast.
I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you could do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the eight business pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.
So make sure of course, that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes and subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well, too, and get to learn about some of those eight business pillars and how you can continue to leverage and build that up so you can go from builder to architect to a course at rockstar and luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO Special Episode.
Gresham Harkless 1:20
The next thing I want to talk about is the riches are in the niches. And I don't know if you've heard this, phrase before Michelle, but I know so many times that people want to really understand like how and what the opportunity are in SEO and those opportunities are in the niches.
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So when you're thinking of home inspector, you might realize that it is a lot more competitive to try to rank for that. So maybe you're going to create a blog post or maybe create a podcast or a video that talks a little bit more about the value of home inspectors. Because every time you go to a client, they might ask you, what's the reason for having a home inspector?
When do I get a home inspector? What are the most important parts that I need to give to someone that's doing a home inspection? These are questions that people will have. And those are the niches that you can start to rank for because more than likely the people that you're quote-unquote competing against don't and aren't spending time in those niches.
So you want to make sure that you're working on that. I always say that content is royalty. So making sure that you have quality content is going to be one of the biggest things. And I think the content is, something that is like sticky paper for people that are searching. So I talked about the blogs.
I talked about videos. I talked about all those things. And it's so important to have that sticky paper on your site. Generally speaking, the more pages and posts you have the more sticky paper you have, the more likely somebody is going to be attracted to that is necessarily the homepage, but potentially that blog posts or that page or that post, whatever it might be, those are the things that are going to definitely, attract people, to those pages of the site.
I alluded to, to number six, which is that SEO is just one aspect of marketing. But really what I love about SEO is that it really takes into account just about everything you're doing online. So like I mentioned about going to the grocery store, getting the ingredients, put them into the cart.
Understand that SEO is not the only way to market, but it is a way of marketing that includes a lot of other aspects of how you're marketing. So if you've been featured on podcasts, if you've had press releases, if you create a blog post, if you've done all those things, what Google does is it starts to comb the internet for all the things you're doing online.
To understand exactly what it is that you've done. So understand that content is extremely important when you're creating it on your site, but it's also important on things that you're doing off the site as well, too. So that's just, another one of the things that you want to try to take into account.
And when you go to a page, understand that you see the things that you see as far as what and how a site shows up, but search engines send out things called spiders and these spiders will basically comb the Internet and look for what these pages are about. So there's things on the back end of your site.
They're called title tag and meta description, and I won't get into that. too much in depth about those things, but all they're essentially doing is again, translating the pages and posts of your site to make sure that you are showing, that specific information. So if you want to really, understand like how your pages are reflecting, not just to yourself, but to search engines, you can look at the title tag and meta description and get an idea.
They have limits, related to the amount of characters, but. All you really need to know is that these will help you to summarize what it is on that page so that Google understands what's on the page and that will attract the people to those specific pages on your site. And I talked a little bit about, content, there's something that's called off page, which is the number eight.
Tip that I have knowing know that a really strong off page content strategy is going to really help. And really, what I want you to think about is not saying, how do I get these backlinks? How do I get the right backlinks? And all of those things, which is definitely a part of SEO. Just think about, Basically places that your target clients are, how can you get in front of them?
So that might be being on podcasts. It might be the opportunity to have press releases. It might be being active in your local chamber of commerce. Basically you get backlinks that are links that are not on your site. going back to the, your site as a whole. So when you have a listing that's on your local chamber of commerce, that's going to link back to your site.
That's going to increase your reputation. When you are featured on this podcast or you get a press release because you were covered by the local news, all these. Are our links that are going back to your site is going to increase your reputation is going to increase the ranking of your site. And then it's going to hopefully drive home, more clients and customers to your door.
But, don't get too much in the weeds about what backlinks, what are backlinks. What do I do? Just think about your activity online, just like you would go in person to maybe multiple networking and groups. Think about how you can be active online and getting featured by other people.
So that's also a major part of what Google is having to do. And One of the biggest questions, especially around content that I get is around just how consistent that how much do you need to post? And I say with number nine, consistency is the most important thing. So I don't want to necessarily say that, quantity is not important.
But I think the quality with the consistency is the thing that you want to shoot for. If you decide that you're going to write 12 blog posts, commit to that 12 blog posts and make sure that you're writing them on a monthly basis and you're releasing them on a monthly basis. Just like I talked about the sticky paper of people that are going to your site.
That's going to be the sticky paper. The consistency of you creating that content is going to help out as far as you're ranking. And it attracts the Google spiders, it attracts them to crawl your site and find out what's on the, on your site. But if you don't do that with consistency, then your site can be, rather dormant and your site's not being crawled, as much as it could be.
So again, just want to make sure that you stay consistent more than anything else. You hear that in any aspect of digital marketing and the really big part that I alluded to is while we understand the product and services that we have start to think about how people that don't know who you are or your brand are going to be searching for you.
Think about those key search terms, those products and services, those. Maybe even misconceptions. If you are talking with a client in here over and over again, that I don't understand the difference between, two different items and it, that they don't really have a full firm handing on what exactly you're doing.
You want to make sure that you're creating some type of content related to that. You're really starting to think about people that need what you provide, but don't necessarily know how to articulate it. Are able to find those pages on your site or blog posts or whatever content that you might be creating.
Number 11 is really about creating that, long-term marketing strategy. Understand that SEO is a long-term marketing ingredient. It's one of those ingredients that you will usually take A long term approach. It's not going to happen instantly. Like an ad is very different from Google ads.
It's very different from Google, my business, Google business profiles is called now, but understand that these are three different ways that you can interact with Google. But SEO in and of itself is a very, usually long-term approach.
So when you're thinking about, working on it, don't say that I did it wrong because you did something yesterday, just understand it's something that's going to take, time for you to understand. I always make the comparison to it being like building a house.
So once you put those bricks on, you continue to build it and build it and build it. And I always believe because people are searching for what it is that you do. You never stop with like your SEO strategy. The last thing that I've touched on is one of the biggest activities that I would have you do if you are thinking about creating like content for your blog, ask your clients what things or pay attention to the things that clients are saying over and over again, that might be potential questions.
If they're asking like, how do you do X, Y, and Z? How do you do SEO? What are the biggest technological things that I should know about? For 2023. These are questions that can be really valuable blog posts and you can, do some really cool things with Google because Google has so much information.
You can literally go to Google and search if you've ever searched and Google completes your sentence before you actually get a chance to write it out. They're doing that because a lot of people are searching for that.
So again, you can ask your clients, you can go to Google itself. But again, do those things just so that you have an idea of first of all, like what people are searching for so that you can make sure that you're there when people are searching.
So hopefully I didn't go through too much in depth, but there's 12 things that I would definitely recommend that you look into.
Michelle Calloway 10:26
No, that was super jam-packed of value. And so we appreciate you doing that for us. And when we do the recording post-production, we'll also put those tips on the screen.
So that'll help anybody that's watching to just jot those notes down. But yeah, all of that's so valuable. The idea here is that yes, you are a media company, but understanding how those spiders and crawlers work and. How to use certain keywords, understanding what keywords your audience is looking for.
All these things are so critical, and you just really helped us to understand that there's many things that we can be doing to help improve our own SEO along the way, right? You have a web team thing. Great. Ask your web team to make sure that they're doing those meta descriptions properly and the header tags.
And also, I'm going to throw in, make sure that you add an alt text to all of your images, because that also will help if your SEO and it will also help your site to be more ada compliant here in the United States. So remember, not everybody's able to see just like walking through the doors of your website.
And, like brick and mortar business, you need to make it accessible to those who have visual or audible disabilities. And I know Revealio, which is our, my for profit, we offer a free widget that does help with some of those issues. If you want, you can reach out and you can get that widget for free for your website.
Anyway, they all this was valuable. I'm going to ask you, Gresh, how can people reach out to you with, they would like to connect with you or your community, cause your content is valuable. Is so awesome. I would love to just keep referring it from the type of heart network because it just really you're serving the same audience.
Yeah, so how can they reach out to you per se?
Gresham Harkless 12:04
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. Michelle, and you could definitely reach out to me. I have a site iamgresh.com. That's I-A-M-G-R-E-S h.com. That has links to Blue 16 media, cbnation.co, the podcast and all of those. You can also check out blue16media.com.
That has everything too. That's blue, number one, number six, media.com. But that has links to everything. So if anything's of interest, if I could provide value, definitely. Please let me know.
Michelle Calloway 12:31
Yeah, that's so great that you provide all this value. And that's one of the things Tech with Heart wants to do is provide a lot of insights to help empower a small business owner to start gravitating towards understanding tech, embracing tech, and then perhaps working with somebody like Rush or his team or our Tech with Heart and our team to help You to implement these things into your business, understanding it is the first part, right?
And then who do you trust? So we are both very heart-centered. We're here to serve. That's why we're showing up here today for this interview as well. So Gresh, what is a phrase or a thought that you would love to leave impressioned upon anybody that's tuning into this episode right now?
Gresham Harkless 13:11
Absolutely. So I'm a big quote person. And the biggest thing that I'll say related to SEO is don't skate to where the puck is skate to where the puck is going to be. That's from Wayne Gretzky. And it's one of the things that you can look to approach SEO, figuring out where people are searching and be there when they're searching
Michelle Calloway 13:28
I love it. Be there when they need you. Perfecto.
Gresham Harkless 13:33
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh again. And I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these eight pillars to show you as a builder, how you can leverage these eight pillars and really level up there. So it helps you level up your business and organization.
So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes. So you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guessed it on their episode. And of course, learn more, a little bit more about us as well, too. This is Gresh signing out. I'll be up a phenomenal rest of the day.
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