In this episode I'm walking you through earned traffic, which is basically when other people do the talking for you. Think podcast interviews, Reddit mentions, PR, guest posts, people linking to your site because they actually want to. It's the slowest of the three traffic methods we've covered in this series, but it's also the most durable and long lasting.

Enjoy the episode!

00:00 Earned Traffic Intro

00:50 Podcast Setup

01:27 Why Earned Wins

01:50 Is It Right

03:08 Guesting Strategy

03:26 Digital PR Tips

03:51 Forums and Collabs

04:42 Media Catching Tools

05:10 Key Takeaways

05:29 Series Wrap and CTA

05:48 Tool of the Week

06:30 Podcast Recommendation

🔗 Resource Links

Become Their Favorite Podcast Guest

🗓️ What if you could update an existing blog post and get double the traffic or increase your leads? This tactic is lesser known and can be super effective for more website traffic. In this upcoming free webinar, I'm walking you through how to audit and update your existing pages so they rank higher for more website traffic, including what Google looks at when deciding whether to bump your content higher, how to spot which pages have the most potential with just a few targeted updates, and exactly what to change and in what order.This one's happening June 26th at 9:00 AM Pacific. ⁠Grab your spot here.⁠ Be there or be square!

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is ⁠Berrycast⁠.

If you're familiar with Loom, this is like that. A screen recording tool that allows users to capture their screen, record their webcam, and create videos effortlessly. I like the interface better than Loom.

⁠Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧  This week's recommended podcast episode is Your Next Breakthrough Won't Come From Working Harder (Do This Instead) with Frencesca Sipma on the Earn Your Happy podcast. 

I am seriously loving this podcast right now. I really felt this episode in my bones. My takeaway came in the form of validation and thinking I'm not alone.

💻 Supporting ⁠blog post here⁠.

So this is the paid advertising episode. It's part three in my series on the three methods of getting more website traffic and honestly it's the one I get the most questions about because people are either scared to try it or they've tried it and it didn't go the way they expected.

I cover several paid channels including Google, Meta, display, newsletter, and podcast advertising. I also brought in two experts, one for Google Ads and one for Meta, and they both said something that I think is the most important thing to take away from this episode before you spend a single dollar.

Enjoy the episode!

00:00 Paid Ads Overview

01:14 Free Webinar Invite

01:53 Paid Traffic Basics

03:30 Google Ads Today

11:30 Meta Ads Setup

13:46 Display Retargeting

14:40 Newsletter Sponsorships

15:56 Podcast Advertising

16:52 Choosing The Right Channel

18:25 Tool And Podcast Picks

20:26 Final Wrap Up

🔗 Resource Links

Reach out to Dewan Chapman on LinkedIn.

Reach out to Allison Harpole-Coley via her website.

Your Website Affects Your Google Ads + More Insider Tips

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt

🗓️ What if you could update an existing blog post and get double the traffic or increase your leads? This tactic is lesser known and can be super effective for more website traffic. In this upcoming free webinar, I'm walking you through how to audit and update your existing pages so they rank higher for more website traffic, including what Google looks at when deciding whether to bump your content higher, how to spot which pages have the most potential with just a few targeted updates, and exactly what to change and in what order.This one's happening June 26th at 9:00 AM Pacific. Grab your spot here. Be there or be square!

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is Berrycast.

If you're familiar with Loom, this is like that. A screen recording tool that allows users to capture their screen, record their webcam, and create videos effortlessly. I like the interface better than Loom.

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is The Internet Got Made at a Made Bed: Shamed or Just Shown? on Home and Hosting with Loui Burke. 

I've been making my bed for years. Like I don't know how to leave the bedroom without making the bed.  It's very minimalistic. One pillow, sheets and cover. I don't do all the decorative pillows. Mostly because a few years back my dog, Phoebe would sleep on them and I didn't want hair all over my pillows. So I'd always cover up my pillows. And if you have too many well, that's just annoying to me. 

Anyway, the point of my story… the other day I saw someone making the bed and sharing his opinion and showing what he does. It said the way I was doing it looked like a teenager's room or something. And then he showed a better way. And it was simple! And in fact it looks so much nicer! 

Turns out he upset people. Or rather people got upset by his video. So he put out this podcast in response. And it's really good. It talks about the dynamics of people and social and misunderstandings. 

I'm truly trying not judge the people who got mad but come on! I know everyone has their triggers… but it was just someone making a f-ing bed! 

If you listen to the episode, let me know how you like it!  

💻 Supporting blog post here.

So you know how everyone talks about organic traffic like it's just SEO? It's actually way more than that. Google is changing things up again with their default search page, and I break down what that means for us. But also, there are so many other ways to get traffic without paying for ads. I also tie in those five questions from last week so you can start connecting the dots on your strategy.
Enjoy the episode!

**************************************

Stop wasting time, energy and money on AI-generated content that never shows up in search results. The goal of SEO content is to appear when someone is searching for your service or offer.
In this upcoming free webinar, I'm walking you through:
• the practical way to use AI for SEO content that actually ranks
• what Google thinks about AI content
• why ChatGPT is not a keyword research tool
• how to structure a blog post so it shows up in both Google and AI search.
This shing ding is going down on May 29th at 10am Pacific time. Grab your spot here. Be there or be square!

**************************************

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. This week’s recommended tool is Wispr Flow.

I had my reservations about always saying what I wanted to type. For some reason it felt like more work. And I was wrong. Wow! The ability to speak to text in any app or platform is incredibily more useful that I expected. The benefit is it saves me the frustration of having to always type everything out. And I feel like I'm a pretty fast typer. I'm not a fan of texting as much as I used to be. It's much simpler to say something and it just be there. Because sometimes the other person doesn't want to hear but read. The downside is I'm much more wordy when it comes to talking vs typing. I appreciate the convenience of this tool.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is Fastest Way to Quantum Leap Your Life on the Earn Your Happy podcast. 

I feel like they use the "quantum leap" phrase a little too loosely in definition but I can appreciate perspective. Lately I've been becoming a lot more aware of the fact that we can't make things happen when we want to. If we could, everything would happen right now, right? And everything we do to affect changes in our life are only allowed when we are capable of keeping them. There are some good self reflection questions in this episode.

Other Resource Links

New Google Search Page

Google's AI Optimization Guide

Use This Code to Track Your Marketing

About This Show

The Get More Website Traffic Podcast covers the strategies, tools, and tactics that help small business owners get more people to their website and turn that traffic into leads. Host Barb Davids breaks it down in plain language every week, with bonus episodes featuring other business owners sharing their expertise on topics that matter to running a small business. Produced by Compass Digital Strategies

This episode kicks off a four-part series on getting more website traffic, and I’m starting with the big picture: there’s more than one way to do this. I break down the three main methods and walk you through the questions you should be asking yourself before you decide which approach fits your business best.
Enjoy the episode!

👇

Stop wasting time, energy and money on AI-generated content that never shows up in search results. The goal of SEO content is to appear when someone is searching for your service or offer.
In this upcoming free webinar, I’m walking you through:
• the practical way to use AI for SEO content that actually ranks
• what Google thinks about AI content
• why ChatGPT is not a keyword research tool
• how to structure a blog post so it shows up in both Google and AI search.
This shing ding is going down on May 29th at 10am Pacific time. Grab your spot here. Be there or be square!

🗞️ Digital Marketing TakeawayDigital marketing advice that doesn't require a dictionary.Short enough to read. Useful enough to use. Every Wednesday.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. This week’s recommended tool is Podchaser.

I use it to get notified anytime my name appears in a podcast. Sometimes podcast hosts don’t let you know when your guest appearance goes live so this is a great way to know. It also sometimes finds mentioned if you’re not a guest. So if someone mentions your name in the show notes, you get notified.

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is How Constraints Help You Focus, Create, and Finish on the Art of Manliness podcast. 

I can’t recall why I liked this one specifically; it was in my like list and I feel like it helped put some awareness around my procrastination habits.

About This Show

The Get More Website Traffic Podcast covers the strategies, tools, and tactics that help small business owners get more people to their website and turn that traffic into leads. Host Barb Davids breaks it down in plain language every week, with bonus episodes featuring other business owners sharing their expertise on topics that matter to running a small business. Produced by Compass Digital Strategies.

Webinar sign up through my newsletter...

🗞️ Digital Marketing TakeawayDigital marketing advice that doesn't require a dictionary.Short enough to read. Useful enough to use. Every Wednesday.

AI can't make you rank. But if you want to use AI, please let me help you use it properly. Join my webinar on May 29th and learn how to use AI for ranking your blog posts. Be sure to join my newsletter list above for details.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is Answer SocratesIt's a search tool that shows you what questions people are asking around a core topic. For example, I typed in "website traffic" and it shows a bunch of questions in categories like all the questions around that topic that start with "how", "can", "what", "where" and others.

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is How to Make the Most of Uncertainty with Simone Stolzoff on the Jordan Harbinger Show. 

My favorite thinking piece is, and I quote… "trust your future self to handle future problems". 

I have been struggling with this unknown as a business owner so much lately since AI is shaking up the search world. And some decisions in my day because I should be doing something else, and this all sort of intertwines together. It gave some practical steps to practice uncertainty, something as simple as taking a new way to work or experiment with smaller choices like something as something that you woudln't normally order at a restaurant. 

If you listen to the episode, let me know how you like it!

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, AI SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.

I am sharing a prompt I use when I'm looking at a blog post that should be getting more traffic than it is. Instead of writing something new, I walk you through how to use AI to evaluate what you already have, what variables you need to fill in to get useful recommendations, and where the prompt has limits so you're not expecting it to do something it can't. If you've got a post sitting on your site that isn't doing much, start here.
Enjoy the episode!

🗞️ ⁠Digital Marketing Takeaway⁠Digital marketing advice that doesn't require a dictionary.Short enough to read. Useful enough to use. Every Wednesday.

👉 For all the prompt, links and resources mentioned in this episode, check out the supporting blog post here.

👉 Stop second-guessing your to-do list and grab the Marketing Energy Matrix to focus on the tasks that actually get you results.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is Her AI Club.

For women who want to use AI and automation in their business, there is no better community. There are monthly calls that help you troubleshoot, build and connect with other people want to improve their business. The ladies who build the community are engaging and always improving the club benefits. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet new people and learn from others. And it’s how I first learned how to build out a full on automated playbook! Super nerdy and super fun. The club also offers tutorials around AI tools and provides skills builder tools to help you customize your Claude.

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is [name of show and who by]

[insert description]

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, AI SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about AI search and whether it changes everything we know about SEO. So in this episode I’m breaking down something I think is worth understanding: the difference between being found on Google and being cited by AI. They’re not the same experience, and they don’t work exactly the same way. I walk through how Google finds and ranks your website, how AI search tools decide whether to reference you, and why the foundation for both comes back to the same thing and that is how credible and consistent your presence looks across the web.

I also bust a couple of myths that are floating around out there, because I almost fell for one of them myself.

If you’ve been wondering whether any of this actually matters for your small business, this episode is for you.
Enjoy the episode!

👉 For all the links and resources mentioned in this episode, check out the supporting blog post here.

👉 Stop second-guessing your to-do list and grab the Marketing Energy Matrix to focus on the tasks that actually get you results.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is Exploding Topics.

It’s a tool that discovers trends. There’s a paid version and a free version. I like it just for the informative nature of what’s trending as it goes across all kinds of industries. Like “dog food maker”. Apparently a big thing right now. Even Dash has one for making treats.

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is The Real Reason You Procrastinate (It’s Not Why You Think) on All it Takes is a Goal with Jon Acuff. I like his episodes. They are short and to the point. I have a habit of procrastinating. I have a habit of overthinking. And I know the two are related. I loved the angle of this episode and what he boiled procrastination down to. I’m not gonna tell you because that would ruin the effect of listening to it. He also mentioned he has a new book called Procrastination Proof. I bought it and read it in two days. I took quite a few notes and know where I get hung. And am actively trying to keep one of his suggestions active in my head to work through my procrastination habit.

🗞️ Digital Marketing Takeaway

Digital marketing advice that doesn't require a dictionary.

Short enough to read. Useful enough to use. Every Wednesday.

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.

This one is a little different. I took the podcast on the road... well, on the trail... and went to Sedona with Sheila Kofahl, founder of And Then She Did.

Sheila leads women on guided hiking adventures. She handles everything: the van, the itinerary, the driving, the parking permits, even the daily briefings. You just show up, lace up, and let her take over. It's honestly the most appealing thing I've heard in a while.

But her story is the real thing. Sheila lost her home in the market crash, walked away from a 20-year marriage, and found herself answering a therapist's question she hadn't thought about in years: what do you actually like to do? The answer was hiking. Solo travel. Getting outside. And then she did.

We talked about the women who book these trips and why they come. Spoiler: it's usually not just for the hiking. Life transitions, empty nesting, grief, illness, fresh starts. The trail has a way of making room for all of it.

Enjoy the episode!

👉 For all the links and resources mentioned in this episode, check out the supporting blog post here.

Stop second-guessing your to-do list and grab the Marketing Energy Matrix to focus on the tasks that actually get you results.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. Peek inside my toolbox.

🗞️ Like newsletters? Digital Marketing Takeaway

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.

Stop losing visitors to "tab clutter" and accidental exits. Learn the golden rule of link settings of when to use "open in a new tab" and how it impacts your bounce rate and SEO. Plus, a quick tip on tracking your traffic attribution correctly.
Enjoy the episode!

👉 For all the links and resources mentioned in this episode, check out the supporting blog post here.

Stop second-guessing your to-do list and grab the Marketing Energy Matrix to focus on the tasks that actually get you results.

🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool.This week’s recommended tool is Vizard.ai.
This tool is incredible! It’s so easy to use. It automatically creates short clips from long videos. And does a great job at it. Super simple editor to take out sections and add them. And easily add an outro scene to the end for branding. 

Peek inside my toolbox.

🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode isis not an episode but a Spotify audio book. Did you know they have them for paid users? I listened to Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. Interestingly, maybe more to me than you lol, I tried to get the physical book. I thought it was in stock at teh local Barnes and Noble but then they texted and said they didn't have it. So ok, I guess I'll just get teh audio version then… which is funny because generally I like reading books vs listening to them. I can skip through parts faster. But this time, the audio seemed to be what I was doing. And it just happened I was going on a trip and I ended up listening to a large portion of it on the plane ride and my long drive from the airport to my destination. For someone who has been searching for how to let go, it is very timely. Now that I gave you that big ole backstory, you'd probably like to know what it's about. It's about a guy who stopped controlling his life and lived. 

🗞️ Like newsletters? Digital Marketing Takeaway

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.

Tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how people find businesses. But — and this is the part most people are getting confused about — your website still matters. A lot. AI doesn't rank pages the way Google does, but it still scans your content, reads your pages, and pulls from what you've got on it. So if your service pages are thin, your About page is vague, or your Google Business Profile is half-finished, AI is going to skip right past you.

I'm running a live virtual workshop on April 22, from 1-3pm PT on YouTube. So if you want to be in the room and get feedback on your actual website, here's your shot. And if you can't make it or you want to go through it on your own time, I'm also making a recorded version available. To watch the replay, you'll need to be on my newsletter list.  I'm streaming iit live on YouTube so nobody had to sign up for anything, because frankly I just wanted to get it out to you without overthinking it. Working on my overthinking. LOL

🗞️ Replay for newsletter subscribers... Digital Marketing Takeaway

About This Show

Created by Compass Digital Strategies, the Small Business Marketing Sweet Spot is a weekly podcast for service-based small business owners who want more website visibility, traffic, and leads. Hosted by Barb Davids, each episode covers the what, why, and how of SEO, content marketing, and digital strategy. Plus expert guest conversations on productivity, branding, and mindset. Because growing your business and loving your life aren't separate goals.