Brendan Kelso and Kate Toon get back to basics
It’s time to get back to basics.
If you’re a regular listener to the podcast you’ll know we dive deep each episode into a different SEO challenge and adventure.
But today I thought it would be useful to have a recap of common mistakes that we often see small business and professional services websites making.
Because the truth is it’s often not bleeding edge SEO that makes the difference in this market, but ensuring you’ve ticked off all the essentials.
So today put your mind at rest as I chat with Brendan Kelso about the core things you need to fix up to ensure your website gets the Google love.
Tune in to learn
- Easy site changes that make all the difference
- SEO basics that most people forget
- Why Google My Business should be a priority
- Why it’s not the cutting-edge things that matter
- And so much more
Listen to the podcast
Share the love
If you like what you’re hearing on The Recipe for SEO Success Show, support the show by taking a few seconds to leave a rating and/or comment on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Stitcher. Thanks!
And big thanks to hannytothebean from Australia for their lovely review:
“My go-to poddy for all things SEO
I love Kate Toon’s relaxed manner and humour as she addresses SEO topics in these easy-listening and informative podcasts.
Definitely worth listening to to up your SEO knowledge and leave you with a smile on your face.”
Share the meme
Connect with Brendan Kelso
Useful Resources
About Brendan Kelso
Brendan Kelso is the founder of Legalsites. It’s a marketing agency that helps law firms get clients online. Primarily through SEO, Google Ads, Web Design, Website Hosting and Consulting.
Brendan founded Legalsites after graduating with a double degree in law and communication. He combined his love for business, marketing and the law. Brendan is also from a family of lawyers. Dad, sister and older brother. Let’s just say that family gatherings are lots of fun!
When Brendan isn’t working on legal marketing campaigns, he loves taking his labrador “Wesley” on adventures, eating good food and writing songs. Brendan also hosts the podcast “Better Law Firm Marketing”. Guests have included Clarissa Rayward and James d’Apice.
Fun fact: Brendan prefers HIS instant coffee to most barista coffee. BUT it has to be his special blend: Nescafe Gold, 2 Equals, 1-2 teaspoons of Coffee Mate
Transcript
Kate Toon:
It’s time to get back to basics. If you’re a regular listener to the podcast, you’ll know we dive deep each episode into a different SEO challenge and adventure. But today, I thought it would be useful to have a recap of common mistakes that we often see small businesses and professional services companies making. Because the truth is it’s often not bleeding edge SEO that makes the difference in this market, but rather ensuring you’ve ticked off all the essentials. So today, let’s put your mind at rest as I chat with Brendon Kelso about the core things you need to fix up to ensure your website gets the Google love. Hello, my name is Kate toon, and I’m the head chef at the recipe for SEO success and online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. I also wanted to tell you about my ultimate SEO checklist help you manage your site and grapple the Google beast. If you haven’t got your copy, head to the show notes and you can get it. But today I am talking to Brendan Kelso. Hello, Brendan.
Brendan Kelso:
Hello, Kate, how are you?
Kate Toon:
I’m very well. So we’re gonna get back to basics today. And right, we’re talking mainly about professional services because I’ll explain why in a minute. I kind of have to think What does professional services mean? So maybe we’ll start with the definition of that. Brendon Kelso is the founder of a legal site. It’s a marketing agency that helps law firms get clients online, primarily through SEO, Google ads, web design, website hosting and consultant.
Brendon founded legal sites after graduating with a double degree in law and communication, who he combined his love for for business marketing and the law. Brendon is also from a family of lawyers, Dad’s sister, an older brother. Let’s just say that family gatherings are a lot of fun. When Brendan isn’t working on legal marketing campaigns he loves walking his labrador Wesley on adventures eating good food and writing songs. Oh, Brendan also hosts the podcast better law firm marketing. Guests have included Clarissa Ray wood, James APS, the APS and soon Kate Toon. Fun Facts. Okay, we love a fun fact Brendon prefers his instant coffee. This is appalling. I’m shocked Brendon prefers his instant coffee to barista coffee, but it has to be a special brand. Nescafe gold two equals and one to two teaspoons of coffee meet. Oh my God, who even are you?
Brendan Kelso:
Now, let me just interject here. So I prefer this instant coffee to most barista coffee.
Kate Toon:
Okay.
Brendan Kelso:
It all depends on the standard of the barista coffee, but a good espresso is you can’t beat that. But yes, some people find it completely bizarre that I like to drink Nescafe gold with two equals and I have coffee made because I can’t be bothered buying milk because it goes off.
Kate Toon:
Oh, there we go is super efficient. My dad loves a nice cafe. And hey, a family of lawyers. That’s full on. Are they very disappointed in you that you’re not a proper lawyer?
Brendan Kelso:
Oh, they don’t talk to me. Yeah.
Kate Toon:
You’re the black sheep of the family.
Brendan Kelso:
I just didn’t want to wear shoes every day. So I do marketing from home.
Kate Toon:
No shoes, no suits. In fact, Brendan is recording this podcast completely naked. I’m joking. No, he’s not.
Let’s get stuck into the episode. So we’re going to talk about basics today. Because as you and I both kind of agree, when I’m putting the notes together for this episode, that a lot of small business owners get super flappy about keeping up to date with all the advanced stuff, you know, what algorithm updates come out? What differences are gonna make when a lot of them haven’t even addressed the basics, right? I mean, that’s your experience with your legal clients?
Brendan Kelso:
Absolutely. I think I was listening to one of your episodes a while ago, and you were talking about how there are always these updates, but the fundamentals don’t really change. And it’s really easy to get shiny object syndrome and to freak out about some new change. But most often these changes don’t even affect the majority of websites anyway.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, we did an episode with Cyrus Shepard where he did a bit of review of the big things that happened in 2022. And, you know, a lot of them wouldn’t have had any impact on your average small lawyer law firm at all, you know, if they’ve got the basics, right, but yeah, when you’re talking about professional services other than lawyers, who else are we talking about?
Brendan Kelso:
Well, I mostly help lawyers through legal sites, but other professional services could be accountants, they could be financial planners, I suppose there’s going to be a really long list of businesses that could be considered professional services.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean, I guess everybody has the service. That’s professional one would hope so it could be everybody from graphic designers, copywriters, right through to accounting so service based businesses, I guess we’re talking about, and most of these businesses would have what we would in the old school term referred to as a brochure where website from, you know, a throwback, I’m old throwback from when businesses just had brochures, and then they wanted to turn them into websites and they created brochure websites. But what we’re talking about is simple websites that probably don’t have an Ecommerce function don’t have things like directories or subscriptions or memberships. But generally informational conversion-based websites. And that’s what we’re going to focus on today. So what we’re going to do is going to flip flop between Brendon and I, I’m going to do a point, he’s going to do a point we’re giving you our top 10 points here.
And I’m gonna go first, because it’s my podcast, and I’m going to talk about sites feed. So we did a big episode on this with Jono Alderson, you can go and listen to that. But to summarize speedily, what you need to think about is site speed, you obviously want it your site to be loading in three seconds or less. Ideally, mobile is a bit harsher. So you might find it a more challenging because of that tiny little processor. And the fact that often you’re using you know, the local tower, which has got dodgy connection, you want to look at your images, make sure that they’re nice and thin, not chubby. So keep the case size down, make sure you’ve got the dimensions, right. Don’t be uploading a 2000 by 2000 pixel and display image and displaying it as a thumbnail. If you’ve got challenges it might be to do with your hosting. If you’ve gone with a super cheap host, you kind of get what you pay for. If you’re sharing your hosting with lots of other sites, that could be problematic too. And then depending on what platform you’re on, whether you’re on Squarespace or Shopify or WordPress, looking at your apps and plugins, people get a bit plugin crazy. I saw a site the other day that had 102 plugins on it, most of which did the same things as each other. It’s going to cause a lot of issues. Every plugin adds file size, CSS, JavaScript, and often causes conflicts, which will stop your site loading at all. Look at your theme. Some themes are chubbier than others. And some themes make big promises that they don’t deliver. And then think about JavaScript and CSS. So JavaScript I like to describe as anything that wiggles on your page, you know, that lovely transition, parallax, scrolling that slider, get rid of it all. It’s really annoying for mobile users, and it doesn’t really add much value. And CSS is Cascading Style Sheets. It’s all about styling, different elements of your site. And again, every plugin, and every app comes with associated JavaScript and CSS files. So again, it might just be good to have a bit of a clean up. So that’s my brief summary on speed, Brendan, over to you. What’s tip number two?
Brendan Kelso:
Number two, sort out that Google Business Profile used to be called Google My Business, Google likes to change their mind all the time and change the names of products, which drives me crazy, I suppose the first mistake, or that I see a lot of people making is they’re just not filling out all of the steps. So Google business profile will walk you through these steps, I will give a caveat that it can be incredibly overwhelming, doing some of these things that we called basics. If you’re completely new to this, I totally understand that. But fill up the steps. So include the locations that you are trying to target. So if you are a business in Sydney, include Sydney as the primary location that you are targeting. It sounds incredibly basic, but I’ve logged into many client accounts, and they literally don’t even have a target location selected. Maybe someone else tried to set that up for them and let them down there. Include the primary category of relevant primary categories. So if you are a criminal law firm, choose criminal lawyer don’t just do like solicitor or something really vague like legal services. Make sure you fill out all those subcategories. There’s a certain amount that you can include there and make sure they’re all relevant, but definitely go and include as many of those as possible. Don’t forget to ask for reviews. I think we’ll talk about that a bit more later. Get some really good photos, make sure your listing pops out and looks really nice, because the reality is a lot of your competitors probably don’t have many good photos. Some of them probably don’t even have any correct contact information, correct phone number, correct website address all super basic stuff, filling your business description. And that’s pretty much all the basics that I would say people need to cover.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I agree. Um, the review thing is crazy. To me. It’s such a great way to reinforce how good you are. And yet so many Google business profiles have none. Photos, I love that and create contact info and opening hours as well. There’s nothing more frustrating than if you’ve gone to the effort of finding out the opening hours you turn up and it’s not open, which happens more often than not, it’s happened to me.
One other thing I would say is there’s an ability to ask questions on your Google business profile. And you know, maybe you could get some friends to ask you questions like do you do divorces? Yes, but yes, we do do divorces. You know some relevant questions that also help sell Yep, Google business profile. They’ve changed the name about 17 times, very frustrating.
Kate Toon:
Now I wanted to talk about keyword research. And funnily enough, Brendon, whenever I do presentations about SEO, I always use lawyers as the example. So I’m going to get you to play along with this, but there’s some group participation here.
So tip number three is going beyond the obvious when it comes to keyword research. So just as Brendon mentioned, you know, you want to choose a relevant category. And not just be I am a lawyer, but I am a something lawyer, we really need to think about user intent when we’re writing our content and doing our keyword research. So hang on my websites just going crazy. There we go. So what is someone looking for when they’re looking for a lawyer? And obviously, the obvious one is lawyer, Sydney, or divorce lawyer, Sydney. And that would seem pretty obvious, but is probably going to be pretty competitive, too. So I like to use the BDF method, which is preconceived beliefs, deepest desires and darkest fears. So although I don’t you know, your entire family are lawyers, what might be a preconceived belief about a lawyer, Brendan?
Brendan Kelso:
I think lawyers couple lot don’t. Because they’re pretty smart people, but in some ways, they’re a bit hopeless. So they’re a bit of an easy target.
Kate Toon:
It’s an easy one to do stereotypes. So whenever I asked this question on my webinar, people say, Oh, they’re going to be expensive. That’s a preconceived belief. And then a deepest desire is that you’re going to resolve your legal legal issue quickly. And then your darkest fear is they’re going to charge you hours and hours of work, and we’re going to talk in legalese. So if you get those cut, if you’re clear on this, wherever your audience is, there’s preconceived beliefs about accountants and graphic designers. Think about those kinds of pain points and turn them into keywords. So then we go instead of divorce lawyer, Sydney, we might be adding just one modifier like affordable, or plain English, or friendly or approachable or quick win or whatever, some modifiers that show, really what the person wants make it more longtail, and therefore easier to compete for but also more conversion focus somebody types in affordable, friendly divorce lawyer in woodwork for women knows exactly what they want. And if you rank for that, and you give them what they want, they’ll convert a lot faster. Any thoughts on that, Brendan?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah, absolutely. And I find a lot of these strategies that you’re talking about work really well, for Google ads. I know, we’re talking about SEO here, but it does sort of overlap a bit. I’ve had a lot of success. One of my client is a criminal lawyer, but she’s obviously she’s a female criminal lawyer. And there seems to be more male criminal lawyers, and there’s more female family lawyers. So a point of difference for her is that she’s a woman. And so she gets a lot of mothers calling her up about, you know, their son or something. And so I’ve been really promoting that as a point of difference in Google ads. And that seems to really be pretty powerful.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, that thinking of those USP is that unique selling, but what have you got that someone else hasn’t got? You know, I think that’s a great one. So, Brendon, we’re up to number four. What’s Tip number four.
Brendan Kelso:
So a big one is unfortunately, you should go to the effort to create separate pages for each service. So the, I guess, if you’re just starting out, and you just want to get that website out, it’s it’s forgivable if you do just have a service page, and you list your services there. And you do have the full intention on creating additional pages as soon as possible. The main reason we want additional pages for each service is it is good for SEO, because it can allow you to target a wider range of keywords rather than to try and make one page rank for an enormous amount of keywords, we can be a lot more specific. And we can narrow down with some longtail keywords, for example. It’s also good for the users, isn’t it so that they can actually learn more about what you’re actually offering people how much it might cost, how they can get started, what it really involves. So I think a common mistake I see is, they kind of just throw the service pages together. And this could be the fault of the actual web designer that’s been paid to do a job and hasn’t really done a lot of work on it. So you really want to have useful and informative content, you want to highlight your team members, you want to cover topics that your competition often neglects like pricing. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with including a detailed FAQ section we can go into deep, into depth.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. And I think you’re so right, so many people get lazy stop with a single services page, and then wonder why it’s not ranking, but it’s trying to rank for multiple things. I love a good services page. And I think as well, you know, you can include some testimonials that are relevant to that particular service. You could even have a little video of you talking about that service. And again, don’t be on the obvious, like I see so many lawyer sites where it’s like, you know, divorce and then like a divorce lawyer does this and this and this and it’s like yeah, we already know that if we’re to the point where we’re searching for we don’t need to be told what divorce is, you know, so actually get to the point of difference. I love that and I love a good FAQ loaded by copywriter friends say FAQs are the kind of recourse of a lazy copywriter. But I don’t agree because I often will jump straight to the FAQ with my specific question rather than having to read paragraphs of content. So I love that and accordions are a great way of doing that. And accordions are fully searchable. People often get worried that they’re not going to be visible to Google, but they are all we’re talking about websites, which is obviously your area of expertise.
That’s I’m gonna give another tip now, around websites, which is homepage essentials, again, a bit of a passion of mine, homepage UX and usability. So you know, some of this isn’t necessarily SEO, it’s UX. But UX is now baked into the algorithm. We’ve had the core web vitals update, we’ve had various other updates that look at above the fold content popups, that kind of stuff. So why do I think the essentials a clean navigation, I don’t think you should go much beyond eight to 10 terms. You know, people debate whether it should be in caps or sentence goes, I don’t think it’s matter. It matters as long as it’s consistent. I like a single word term now. So not contact us just contact, who else are we contacting, we don’t need the pronoun. And I like it to be in an order like you know, home, who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and why you’re awesome at it. So you know, that would be something like home about services, portfolio, FAQ, and then usually blog and contact go at the end. As we said, services in the main nav with a nice little drop down. I would also on my homepage, start with a nice image, I wouldn’t have a slider or anything rotating. Make sure it’s not too huge. I would have my USP, what makes you stand out, I would list out my services, I would show a little bit of stuff about the team, you know, maybe a little team photo, or you know, who’s the founder of the practice a little bit of proof. And that can be in the form of testimonials, but it can also be in the format of associations and memberships or as featured in and then finishing off with a strong call to action. Is there anything I’ve missed on the homepage that you would include Brendan?
Brendan Kelso:
Well, I wanted to quickly just rant about videos.
Kate Toon:
Oh great.
Brendan Kelso:
There’s nothing that bugs me. Well, there’s plenty of things that bug me, let’s be honest, but I can’t stand when there is an auto playing video, in a homepage hero section drives me crazy, slows it down serves no value, especially when they’re just showing sumptuous landscape shots of you know, Nabis Newcastle.
Kate Toon:
The drone, isn’t it the dreaded drone footage somebody’s made bought a drone? Let’s use it to make a video on our homepage. Oh my god, you use
Brendan Kelso:
Bloody useless slows down the website doesn’t help anyone. It’s usually pixelated and slows it all down. And it’s it’s like a thing I see with, real estate agents love it.either. I don’t like it. What do you think?
Kate Toon:
I think you know, I wouldn’t have that as the header, I would always just have an image and then I think you can either video could be further down the page if you want it so that it’s not interfering with the load of the page. Never autoplay, and then you know, think about the purpose of that video, I write a lot of video scripts or I did when I was a copywriter, you know, you can’t really go beyond two minutes people aren’t going to watch more than that. What’s the point? You know, get to the point. And even if it’s just the tip camera of the, you know, the founder of Business saying what makes us different is this, even if he was reading out your USP, pretty much, but yeah, don’t give a crap about the drone footage of your office, you know, at all. So yeah, I think they have a purpose. And they can add some warmth and energy but definitely not in that top spot. And definitely not auto playing, ugh, the worst. Tip number six. Brendon we’re racing through them. I love it.
Brendan Kelso:
Oh my god, we’re so fast. Okay, link building. So well, where do we start, I’ll try and get this as concise as possible. First of all, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. So please don’t waste your money on Fiverr unless you really know what you’re looking for. Because they will promise you the world for probably not a lot of money. And you get what you pay for. And in this case, which is you really essentially getting nothing. So don’t buy into, you know, link farms and random business directories you’ve never heard of. So quality over quantity. So start thinking outside the box. What are some powerful websites that could be really beneficial to your business? For a lot of service businesses, we should be thinking locally. That’s going to be low hanging fruit. So we should think about media outreach. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing a press release about your new law firm. I’m just going to constantly talk about law firms. That’s obviously what I do. But a press release. Hey, we’ve got a new law firm reach out to local media and it’s amazing how effective that is. I’ve done that for one of my clients. And we get a bunch of mentions and links on it. Important websites that a lot of businesses don’t get mentioned on. Think outside the box again, maybe you want to be a podcast guest like I’m being today. And maybe that podcast has a website and they’re going to mention you and they might link to you all of that stuff can really help a lot of people aren’t really doing it.
Think about some low hanging fruit like unlinked mentions. So I just had a client joined recently, and he’s a tax lawyer, and he’s got a bit of a presence on Tik Tok. And he’s already been mentioned quite a few times online. But it hasn’t been linked from some of these websites. And we’re already getting success by reaching out to these websites and requesting links. And these some of these websites are like pretty legit. So yeah, what are your thoughts?
Kate Toon:
I just love all those tips. Fantastic. I think you know, going back and finding citations and getting them linked, most people are perfectly happy to do that. They just didn’t do it, because they forgot. And I also love giving love. So I call it good karma SEO. So you talked about podcasts, that’s one kind of thing, but testimonials. You know, if you write someone a testimonial and send it, they’re highly likely to put it on their site. If they don’t link to you, you can follow up and say, so glad to see my testimony on your site, would you mind linking to it. But also, I think, you know, you can sponsor local charities, especially if you’re a lawyer, you’ve got loads of money, I’m joking. You can you know, sponsor local charities, and then they will probably put your logo on their website, give you a link back and you’re kind of doing something good. So as long as it’s done with not huge expectations, like you’re not being nefarious about being kind, I think that can be great. You also had a point that you’re gonna mention about.edu.gov and.org, what did you want to mention there?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah, so these domains often tend to be pretty persuasive. So a good example would be, if you were someone who went to university and got a degree, a lot of universities will have a part of their website where they write success stories of people who have graduated and gone on to do really cool things, maybe you might be one of those things, and you might want to reach out to them and go, Hey, I’d love it. If you talked all about how great I am. And you might be lucky enough to get a link, they often will link to the website of this new business. And you if you went to Newcastle University, and you can get a link from Newcastle University, it’s actually pretty cool, it’s actually going to generally do quite a lot. For you know, the it’s going to persuade Google to hopefully increase you in the rankings and get you some more clients.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean, Google is all about this experience, expertise, authority and trust. And that kind of link from those kinds of sites really builds the trust and the authority, you’ve given me an idea, actually, I’m gonna get back in touch with Leeds University and tell them the things that I’m doing. Maybe they’ll feature me great idea.
Brendan Kelso:
You’re welcome.
Kate Toon:
Okay, so we’re up to number seven. And I’m going to talk about mobile friendliness. Now, this is an old story, mobile-geddon, on our mobile pocalypse was back in 2015, when Google really started rolling out the mobile friendly updates. These days, you know, most sites will be just judged on their mobile version, not even their desktop version. And if you look at your traffic in Google Analytics, you may see that the majority of your traffic is coming from mobile or other devices now rather than a desktop, yet, so many people develop their site on a desktop where it looks big and pretty. And there’s white space, and you can take ages for things to load because you don’t care. So mobile, what can we talk about, things that get my goat with mobile? I’m sure they do. You too, Brendon are fiddly navigations tiny text elements in the drop down that are too close together that My Big Fat thumb touches the wrong one, drop downs that drop down, then drop down again, then drop down again, like if you’re going beyond two drop downs, get a mega menu contrasts. So you know, I don’t think it happens so much in the legal space. But often designers will go with aesthetic over function. And so you get like light gray copy on a lemon background, which kind of from a graphic design point, it’s really pleasing. But it’s impossible to read on a mobile phone in Coles, when you’re in a rush, you know, no more than three up three to three steps to get to where you need to go. So you know, pretty flat structure not super layered. You know, I think image you know, images for the sake of images that you can turn images off if they’re not rendering well on mobile, you know, you just really strip it down. AMP is no longer really a thing. But I think we need to look at mobile sites in a different way. And just remember that someone on a mobile is time poor, they want what they want quickly. So try to really consider the mobile experience when you’re building your site. Any additional thoughts there, Brendan?
Brendan Kelso:
I think you’re bang on. I unfortunately have to point the finger at the people who are building websites and often that is not the client that is often the designer and you’re right, they’re usually building it or they’re always building it on some big luxurious. This high-definition screen then. And for some reason, it’s still in the year that we’re in now they’re neglecting mobile. And it often looks to me like, they haven’t really even looked at the mobile layout. They’ve made it look nice on desktop, and they’ve completely neglected how it’s going to size down. So know everything you said, I think you’ve got to really pay close attention to how the bloody website looks on a mobile device and ensure that it’s user friendly, really, that needs to be so important. People need to be able to find what they’re looking for. They need to be able to call you complete basic actions, it needs to just be it’s common sense. Unfortunately, it gets neglected.
Kate Toon:
It does mean I still find websites where their phone numbers and click to call. It’s like really in this day and age Good grief. Well, let’s go into something a bit. Slightly removed from the website. Let’s talk about Google reviews. We talked about Google My Business. And I mentioned that so many sites that you see don’t even have a single review there. So what are some tips to help professional services get reviews?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah, so first of all, too many websites are still just posting written testimonials from Joe Bloggs, with no photo, no reference, we don’t know who they are. And unfortunately, it can come across like did you just write that yourself? Is that a real review? So yes, Google reviews are still important. How do we get them? So first of all, you got to ask. And I know that can be a bit challenging for some people. But the more you do it, the easier it gets. So ask I think you need to keep the asking very simple and straightforward. Don’t write a bloody narrative to someone explaining why it would be great if they, you know, gave you five seconds to write a review, not. So be simple, provide the link. So you can log into your Google business profile. And there’s a simple link that you can copy and paste and you can send that to people, they click on it, and then they go to the correct listing. There are many service businesses out there that have a name that is also very similar to many other businesses out there. Like tradies, for example, are a good example of that. So you do need to provide that link. Because you don’t want your clients giving a competitor a review, or someone who’s at the other side of the country has got the same name as you provide the link. And I would recommend for for law firms. For example, if you’re a family lawyer, you could have a matter that goes on for years. Now, I don’t think you should be asking me for a review at the end of that matter. Now. To number one reason is that’s just too far in the future. And you’re missing out on getting a review now. But also, unfortunately, in some services, people are just exhausted at the end of the process, especially especially if it’s like a divorce property settlement matter, you probably did a great job and get that gotten the best outcome, you could but at the end of it all, the last thing they’re thinking about is writing a review for you. So those are some of my tips. What do you think?
Kate Toon:
I love that one about the timing of the review? You know, it’s really important. I think a lot of businesses leave it too late, as you said, and this review the different stages, the review could be I’m enjoying working with them. Like I’m not saying it’s finished, it doesn’t even have to be on the result it can be with the experience of working with someone the relationship, I think as well. Like, think about the kinds of reviews you want like what are your value propositions? You know, we talked about are you affordable? Are you trustworthy? Are you friendly, trying to get reviews that back each of those up? So one is talking about your value one is talking about how relatable you were. I think there’s nothing wrong with sending some examples. So here are a couple of reviews that were written by other people. I often for my copywriters I have a template in the store that gives them people a template to fill out. So I loved working with Brendon from legal sites. I found him to be x and y and Z, working with him was why you know A, B and C because the thing is, I think a lot of people want to give testimonials but they don’t know what to write. And they’re worried about what to say you can also hire a copywriter. Get a bit of batch of testimonials that you want to get and get them to call up for clients. Have a quick chat to them and then write up a response and then get them to approve it. So that’s after I’ve been hired to do that. But as you said the biggest thing I think is full name. Often location helps as well photograph because otherwise it does just look like you wrote them yourself and often and believe me copywriters do get asked to just make up testimonials we refuse the good ones do. Businesses do ask?
Alright, well, we’re up to tip number nine. And again, this may not feel like SEO, but it kind of is. So as Brendon mentioned, there are lots of professional services that have similar names or you know, it’s just super competitive to be found for what you do. So you want to try and be found for who you are. And one way to do that is social media. Now links from social media won’t have the impact that links from websites have, as Brendon just mentioned, but they do bring traffic, they do bring awareness, they do bring trust and authority. And I think obviously, for professional services, your marketplaces, LinkedIn, I mean, great, take some shots and put them on Instagram of you and your Christmas party call get on Facebook, you might find some people there. But you know, b2b, b2c, LinkedIn is really the place to be. And you just get so much more bang for your buck on LinkedIn posts that you write hang around for ages, you get comments months later on posts. You know, there’s lots of different tactics, you can use video, you can use imagery, you can write long form posts or polls. But I think you know, you can get testimonials on LinkedIn, as well as Google. I just think it’s a missed trick. And I think a lot of people will say, especially in law will go oh, I don’t do social media. That’s not for us. But I think LinkedIn is the one area that they could go to, because there is still that slightly more professional nature. You’re not necessarily putting pictures of your labrador up, although you and I probably would. My Pomeranian is all over mine. So what do you think? Do you think lawyers should jump on LinkedIn?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah, well, I literally just posted a photo of my dog today.
Kate Toon:
I mean, I love that, because I think LinkedIn is too stuffy. And I don’t like to change who I am from platform to platform. So you know, well, I wouldn’t put a picture of me on holiday up there necessarily, unless there was a story related to business with that. I think there’s nothing wrong with sharing a bit of personal stuff, because it makes me more relatable, right?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah. So I’ve noticed you have been more consistent on LinkedIn lately, what sort of what sort of content has worked best for you?
Kate Toon:
I’ve tried a number of things I’ve been using stream yard to go live, zero impact, not great. Videos, in general just don’t seem to get much cut through. Obviously, polls get a lot of interaction, but I’m not sure they do any good. For me. It’s always the story, a long form story. And it’s not like I was living in a bin. And then I did this and look at me now, you know, it’s not that false. I’m so amazed to have been featured in this article. It’s I did one today about someone who wrote to me and kindly pointed out a typo in a podcast from 2017. I’ve used and instead of an, and they told me that they’d lost all faith and confidence in me. And I’m like, thanks brilliant, you know, so I shared that because I think that’s a common experience for business owners. And I find posts that where people are going to nod. That’s what I like, you know, when people go, yeah, that happened to me. Yeah, like that. But maybe a bit of a lesson in there. But I tend not to try and be too preachy. What’s working for you, apart from the dog?
Brendan Kelso:
Yeah, well, that definitely works well. I find that including a photo can help. It can help to help you take up more screen space to get people’s attention, especially if you’re not, you know, a LinkedIn celebrity. But you’re right, telling stories. And generally having a decent amount of copy on there helps sometimes it’s it’s not essential. But I’ve I found that when I scroll, and I see a post that is viral, I suppose it’s usually it’s almost never a video. It’s usually long story, maybe including a photo relatable something about, you know, in work related issues, I suppose it’s a common thing. So something relatable tells a story.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. And talking of stories, let’s do our final tip, which is all about content. I mean, I think you and me could talk about this all day, but sum up some points that you think professional services can use for their content.
Brendan Kelso:
Okay. The main thing that I see people getting wrong is being too broad and generic, especially in the title of their content, for example, like a blog post. So I won’t name the law firm, of course, but I saw a classic example the other day, the blog was called pets in family law proceedings. And I was like, What the hell is this going to be about? Like, like, sorry, that’s just not a good title. Very typical kind of lawyer II title. And then there was like, no headings. The font was small, big, chunky paragraphs, and it was mostly just send, like shortcut case analysis. Cool. Unfortunately, who are we writing for here? Are we writing to impress other lawyers? Or are we writing to attract some work? Now? I think you’re writing to attract some work? I would hope so. So I just thought, well, like essentially, the article was about who gets the pet when you have a divorce, so maybe call it who gets a pet in a divorce or breakup, pretty straightforward. And then you can answer a bunch of related questions and you know, just you know, hit a home run. So be specific. In your approach. Don’t neglect your keyword research basic on page optimization, you need your meta title, you need your meta description, you need short sentences, don’t have big chunks of text, include some images, all that stuff. have quick page loading, be very clear answers like related questions as well, you don’t just have to like, how long will it take you to answer a question, like who gets a pattern of divorce? It might not be something that requires 2000 words. But I bet there’s going to be a lot of related questions that you can answer. So don’t neglect your headings, some people aren’t going to read the whole thing, are they just going to skim through, and that’s fine. So we don’t have to write expecting people to pay attention to every single word that we’re writing. But we do want to give people what they’re what people have clicked on there for a reason, I think. So I think we want people to achieve what they went there to look for.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, Google, Google’s helpful content update is all about, you know, the end of this article, can you say that you really answered the question, you really gave valuable advice, almost to the point where I don’t need to go anywhere else. That was enough. You know, often you read a post, and it’s like, yeah, and then you read another and another, and another. And maybe after three or four, you’ve got the picture. There’s no reason why you can’t achieve that in your single blog post. And it may go to 2000 words, much prefer people to write one quality 2000 word posts a month, then three 100 word rubbishy ones that have no real value and just state the obvious. And obviously, there’s, you know, with chat GTP coming out or PTO is going at the wrong way around. It’s modifying, I just did an episode on this, you can go back and listen to, you know, there are tools like that will really help you with the blank page and get you started. Would I take the content that tool generates and put it straight on my site? Absolutely not. It’s just not have enough quality yet, and has no personality. So but it’s there, and it can help you especially with things like you know, the blog title that you came up with? You want to be answering questions, then you might get the Featured Snippet as well, which would be amazing position zero. So look, we have covered off let’s do a recap. We have covered ours speed, Google business profile, keyword research, the separate services, pages, homepage essentials link building, mobile friendliness, Google reviews, LinkedIn and written content. Amazing, Brendan, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for your help. Where can we find out more about you?
Brendan Kelso:
Check me out on LinkedIn, Brendon Kelso. There’s that there probably be a link somewhere. I’m guessing that people can find.
Kate Toon:
I’ll pop it in the show notes. Yeah. So that’s how I found Brendan’s LinkedIn. See, it does work. But we’ve included links to your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your Tiktok, your YouTube, your Facebook and your Twitter as well as your website, see got all bases covered. I love it.
Brendan Kelso:
I don’t even use Twitter, but it’s there.
Kate Toon:
I don’t think anyone does anymore. It’s kind of gone downhill, hasn’t it? Anyway, thank you so much for your time today. Brendan. It’s been fab having you on the show.
Brendan Kelso:
Thank you
Kate Toon:
So that’s the end of this week’s show. If you have questions about SEO for professional services head to my I LOVE SEO group on Facebook. I do regular q&a’s, seo round ups.
I like to end the show with a shout out to one of my lovely listeners.
hannytothebean from Australia writes:
My go-to poddy for all things SEO
I love Kate Toon’s relaxed manner and humour as she addresses SEO topics in these easy-listening and informative podcasts.
Definitely worth listening to to up your SEO knowledge and leave you with a smile on your face.
So thanks hannytothebean.
And thanks to YOU for listening.
If you like the show, don’t forget to leave a five-star rating and review on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you heard the podcast.
Your review will help others find the show – and learn more about the lovely world of Search Engine Optimisation.
And you’ll get a shout out on the show.
Oh and don’t forget to check out the show notes for this episode at www.therecipeforseosuccess.com where you can learn more about SEO for professional services, check out the useful links and leave a comment about the show.
Until next time. Happy SEOing.
