Most of us didn’t start our businesses dreaming about keywords and algorithms — we just wanted to help people and share what we love. But at some point, we realize: if people can’t find us, we can’t help them. In this episode, we’re talking about when SEO actually matters, when it’s okay to follow your gut instead, and how to make those choices without losing your voice or your sanity. Listen in to hear: Links Mentioned: Get Your Free Action Guide: SEO Made Simple: A Soulful Strategy Checklist Join the Smart Soulful Business Facebook Community: www.smartbusiness.thrivecart.com/soulful-strategy-community Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts If you love the Smart Soulful Business Podcast, please consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps us support more people — just like you! Click here, scroll to the bottom of the page, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then let us know what you loved most about this show! Also, follow the Smart Soulful Business podcast! This is the best way to stay up to date on the new episodes that are released every week. Be sure to follow now so you don’t miss out! Listen On: Becky Brown 0:01If you’re a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we’ve got you covered. I’m Becky. Laurie Graham 0:08And I’m Laurie. We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business. Becky Brown 0:17Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around. Hey and welcome back to Smart Soulful Business. We are Becky and Laurie. Laurie Graham 0:31Together, we help Christian women build businesses that are soulful, strategic, and successful. Becky Brown 0:37In our last episode, we talked about how to choose the right experts, coaches, and consultants, people who actually get you and your business. And today, we’re kind of staying in that same lane of clarity and confidence, but we’re zooming in on something that sometimes confuses a lot of people. So today, we are going to be talking about SEO. So this is something that is so important and totally changed my business. Like this is what totally changed my business. I mentioned on the last two episodes that the course I took on SEO, there was this huge light bulb moment for me where I thought I understood this, and I totally didn’t. I was so doing it wrong. So if you are not familiar with this term, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. So it basically means optimizing your content, wherever you are creating it, however you are creating it, by using the words that people are actually searching for, so that your audience can actually find you and find the solutions that they’re looking for. And that’s the beauty of SEO, right? It’s this beautiful pairing between getting the people that who need your content, to your content. That is the purpose of SEO. So you may have heard this term a million times already, or this may be a completely new discussion for you, optimizing for search, using keywords, thinking about algorithms, but for you, where you are right now in your business, what does that actually mean for a small, purpose-driven business? What does that look like? When does it matter? And when can you break the rules of SEO to stay authentic? And what does that look like? So we’re going to wrestle with you through some of those tensions today in today’s episode. So if you have ever wondered whether SEO is worth your time, or if you’ve secretly thought, I don’t want to write for Google, I’m writing for God, this is the episode for you. So let’s talk about what’s changed, what really matters, and how to show up online in a way that helps people actually find what you are here to offer. So we’re going to start here with why SEO still matters. So SEO, like I mentioned, it just means helping your people find you. This is not about manipulation. It’s just about communication and search today looks really different, than it used to when I first learned SEO, it looks so different because today, people aren’t just googling. They’re searching on Pinterest and YouTube and using AI tools. And the question is, does your content help them find what they’re actually looking for? Yeah. So if God wants your people to see it, He will make a way. Have you heard that before? Laurie Graham 3:23Becky. Early on, I would see Christians writing these big blogs and saying, and it was always the women saying, ‘Well, if God wants people to see it, He’s going to make a way’. And I would just be like, can we just be smart? Can we just be smart? Becky Brown 3:38Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’ve heard this so many times, and what breaks my heart is when I hear people saying that, and they’re struggling so much. They’re asking the question, ‘why isn’t my business going anywhere?’, when they’re holding this belief. And gosh, that’s hard to see. So wisdom and stewardship go hand in hand. We really believe that here at Smart Soulful Business, that’s why we have both Smart and Soulful in the title, because we believe that wisdom and stewardship can go hand in hand. And SEO is not unspiritual, but it is strategic. It’s how we get to partner with God, with what He is already doing in our own hearts, in our own passions, and SEO is something that helps that message travel farther to the people who need it. So Laurie, I want to hear from you. What is one time that you realized it was like a light bulb moment for you? You realized that SEO made a difference, like when a post or a podcast episode suddenly took off because people were actually searching for that exact phrase. Laurie Graham 4:44You know, it’s so funny, because most of when I realized SEO made a difference was before I really started my business. I had a little blog, but it was one. It was watching you Becky, because you would literally say, oh my gosh, this many people found my post and I did this keyword. And. I’m like, What is she talking about? But I almost learned more like, and we say this about what we’re doing as we partner with women building businesses, I learned from what you did, and kind of started with that already in my head, but I will talk about the thing that popped in mind when you asked that was when we changed the name of my business. So when I started my blog, I work in the Small Church Space. For those of you who are maybe listening for the first time, that’s my main business, at least my main one up till now, we’ll see if that shifts right. But it’s my main it’s my mainstay, right? And I speak in the Small Church Space, but my blog, my website, was called The Creative Little Church. The Creative Little Church. We were doing a lot of creative things in worship, in smaller churches, and ‘Creative’ was such a word for me, the ‘Little Church’ was like, this little church is doing these amazing things. And as I grew my business, even the people on my advisory board couldn’t say it. They would literally say, well, The ‘Little Church thing’, The ‘Creative Little Church’, and they couldn’t say it, like they couldn’t say it. So I’m getting the SEO here right, like, because people wonder how to name things, how SEO makes a difference? And we did. And just if you’re starting out naming your business, just pick the name that’s there. Done is better than perfect. You’ll probably change your name or your brand or your colors along the way, because I did. That’s how I can say I did it. And I had a big audience. I had a big following. Some people were unhappy with the name change. They thought it was too big of a risk, but we changed the website name and our business name to Small Church Ministry. How boring is that for this creative ADHD girl. You know what? I mean? Like, I mean, it’s not punchy, it’s not sexy, it’s not, you know, exciting. It’s called Small Church Ministry. When we made the name shift, when we started doing its things exploded in a completely different way. Because the SEO, because that’s people aren’t searching for the ‘Creative Little Church’. Becky Brown 7:03Yeah, they are, for sure, searching for and you even have this phrase all over your website, ‘Solutions for small churches’. That’s what they’re looking for. How do I do this? Women’s ministry in my small church, children’s ministry in my small church. And small church is what people are searching for. Laurie Graham 7:18Yeah? So my fun name that I was so emotionally connected to was like, really holding me back. So SEO, like, that’s the biggest example I can give you, but Becky, for you. And let’s flip this a little bit. What’s one time you ignored SEO because you knew SEO? You knew it. You were learning all along the way. What’s one time you ignored it and regretted it? Like, did you ever have a clever title that nobody found because no one was searching those words and by title you all, both of us, have blogs, and so we’re talking about the title here. We’re going to talk about everything else in a minute too, but we’re specifically talking about, like, the titles of blogs, or maybe you have other things. Becky Brown 7:57Oh yeah, there’s all kinds of things that I’ve titled over the years. But, I mean, I’m just gonna backtrack to when I thought I understood SEO, and I really didn’t understand SEO. So they, so I was following all the SEO rules, like people were telling me everywhere, and I’m a good learner, guys. Like, I pay attention and I learn, and I apply it right away. So I was hearing people say, take the thing people are searching for. Take that phrase, those words, and put them in these places all over your posts. And I was doing that, except I had no idea. Well, what’s the phrase people are looking for? I didn’t know. And so I was making up these random things from like, pieces of my blog, but they were the creative like, it was like, more like, email titles. You know how email titles, we want to stir up some curiosity. We want people to click. That’s not quite the same for blog post titles. Blog post titles, you want to tell people what they’re going to be reading about, what to expect. And so I had all these. I actually went back to look for this episode. I had all these old blog post titles that were things like, You are always on my mind dot, dot, dot. Empty arms. Withdrawal. Seeing Beyond. And you guys, what is that article about? I don’t even remember. I wrote the posts and I was reading these titles, and I’m like, what was that even about? So it doesn’t tell you what you’re actually getting. And nobody is searching for ’empty arms’. ‘You are always on my mind.’ Nobody is searching for those things. So I thought I understood it. I was following the rules. I was putting them in my H1 and H2s, and like I was following the rules with the wrong phrases. So they felt so inspiring and deep and creative to me, but they weren’t actually reaching my audience and what they were actually searching for. They don’t tell anybody what I’m actually talking about. So that was my missing piece with SEO that I think is really important...
