This is John Locke.
I'm only going to do one video today.
I know for the past couple weeks, I've been trying to do two or three videos a day, but
today it's only going to be one, and I'm going to talk about something that's very near and
dear to my heart, and I hope that a lot of people in SEO, and in web design take this
to heart.
But first off, to let you know, February is doing really good.
I wasn't so sure about mid-January how February was going to turn out.
February is picking up really good, there's going to be some projects coming out.
New sites, some new SEO clients, so that's awesome.
So thank you to everyone who sent them my way, and thank you to everyone who agreed
to sign on, I appreciate it.
The second thing is, today I'm in the middle of a big site migration and email migration.
Always fun.
So I'm just taking a step out to get some supplies, and get some food in the house.
So what I really wanted to talk about today, and this is something that I could say once
every two weeks, make a video about it, and it would still be relevant until the the end
of time, I really feel this.
SEO is not magic fairy dust that you sprinkle on at the end (of a site launch).
It's not magic sprinkles that you put on the cupcake at the end of the process.
It's not the taco sauce you put on the burrito right before you eat it.
It's not the shake of salt that you put on the steak at the end.
SEO has to be something that is thought about from the very start of your project.
Something that I've been doing lately; something that I've been noticing lately.
You've heard me talk about searcher intent.
My good friend Jason Tucker and my good friend Bridget Willard they asked me a few months
ago "What do you mean by searcher intent?"And it's more than just the localization of words,
and things like that.
Go back and watch the episode on WP Blab.
It's really got to do with matching the patterns of what people are looking for.
The content of the page, but also the elements that you put in the page.
I noticed this a lot, people come to me, after their site has been built, after it is completely
done, and I really get the sense sometimes that people are just looking for that extra
shake of SEO, like on the top, the little dab of fairy dust to make it all work.
I really feel that's completely backwards from what you should be doing.
Now Idon't know if in 2017 that I really had my head thinking in this area, or even in
the first half of 2018.
But what I've seen over the last six or nine months, I don't think I'll ever do this another
way again.
If you're a web designer, if you're a developer, if you're a branding agency, a design agency,
whatever it is, the very first thing that you should do when your client says that they
want to build a new website and their intent is to get more search traffic, you need to
do this.
right.
here.
Get a list of their top 20 or 25 keywords that they tell you they want to rank for.
Then what I want you to do for each one of those keywords.
do an actual Google search.
Do a Google search for each one of those top 20 keywords that they want to rank for.
Then, for each one of those search results, the first page of Google -- click on each
one of those results, and write down exactly what you see on each page.
On the top ten results.
Write down exactly what you see on the page.
Describe what's on the page, how many words, what topics they are discussing on the page,
and I want you to also look at if there's a chart, if there's a video, if there's an
image, if there's a table of information -- write all that stuff down.
And what you're going to notice is that there is a pattern for each one of these keywords.
Now, you might -- in some cases, you might only see it in 7 out of the 10.
Maybe you will see it in 8 or 9.
Sometimes you will see it all ten results.
And I'm not kidding when I say this.
If you try and just design something by what you think looks good, or what the client thinks
is good, or what you saw on the CSS Awards last week, or what you saw on Site of the
Day on Dribbble -- you're gong to fail at SEO, and you're going to do your client a
disservice.
The first thing you should do is map out what you're going to put on each page by what is
already ranking, and if you fail to do this, then you will fail your client, and fail to
help boost their traffic.
And I've seen this a ton of times, now I really realize why.
You cannot fight the pattern.
Google has figured out what people want for each keyword.
And you're not going to break that pattern.
So the best thing to do is go and look for what pattern exists, and there is one for
each keyword.
Then, you can design the page accordingly.
Also, I want to throw this in there.
For anyone else out there that is building websites.A lot of discussions that I've had
over the last year with people, I think a lot of you, and especially in the WordPress
community, you feel really bad cause you're not charging -- hmm, you feel if you push
your rates up to 5k, or 7k, or 8k, or even 10k seems like "Whoa" -- mind-blowing Believe
me when I say to you that I've had a lot of conversations over the last year where I've
seen what people got, and asked them how much they paid for it -- believe me when I say,
you would never feel bad ever again.
EVER again.
For charging a decent amount, because I've seen some really shyster people charge a lot
and the clients didn't get much.
I'm just going to throw that out there.
Anyway, I'm going to get back to this site migration and this email migration.
Like I said, I'm going to be getting some new case studies in my Portfolio soon.
Hoping to get some video testimonials soon.
Definitely, a lot of good news, a lot of good things happening for my clients, and as a
result, a lot of good things happening for me and my fam.
Until next time, I just want to say, if you have a SEO question, I'd love to answer it,
go ahead and drop it in the comments below.
I'll answer it out in a future video for you.
I'm easy.
I'm putting out videos at least every week, but if you've noticed, they've been a lot
more frequent.
So hey.
Subscribe if you want to get some info.
Thanks for being on this journey with me.
And until next time, peace.