“Would you rather spend 5 hours on a post that could get you thousands of hits per month over 2 years? And in today's SEO space, you're gonna have to, like, update it every year, but we all know updating doesn't take as much time. So if you do that, 5 hours of time and it can feed you. Right? Like, not just like, oh, someone might like it. It can actually feed you for years. Or would you rather spend, I don't know, 30 minutes for a 24-hour cycle and pour 30 more minutes in for 24 hours?” - Lauren Gaggioli
Joe Casabona: One day in March, I started getting regular inbound requests for my coaching form, regular as in frequent, and I had no idea why. When I looked into it, it turns out that I was ranking at number 2 on Google for a podcast coach. And not to sound like a broken record, but I had no idea why. I didn't feel like I was doing anything special. I didn't do any keyword research. I didn't even write the content in a certain way. In fact, the reason I made that page in the first place was to send people someplace from my mailing list. So I wanted to learn more.
That's why I sat down with my friend and SEO pro, Lauren Gaggioli, to talk about what SEO really is in 2024. And we cover a whole range of topics in our conversation from why quality human-written content will always beat AI-generated stuff to how to do keyword research and why SEO is really a long game.
But here are my top takeaways from the conversation.
- SEO is about appealing to Google's bots and making your website discoverable for relevant search queries. But Google prioritizes quality human-written content over AI-generated or keyword-stuffed content. So, yes, you do need to write for the Google bots, but the Google bots like content that is written for humans.
- SEO is a long-term investment, and it's essential to commit to that investment for at least 12 months. I think about that the way my daughter is planting seeds right now. She's really excited to see those flowers bloom, but I have to explain to her that, hey. It's not gonna happen tomorrow or the next day. It's gonna take a few weeks to see those flowers bloom. And while things like social media could be useful for engagement or that dopamine hit or that kind of immediate feedback, SEO is more effective for driving targeted traffic and revenue.
- Researching low-difficulty, high-relevance keywords and focusing on answering questions that your target audience asks is crucial for SEO success. So you don't just wanna go for these super high search volume terms because those are gonna be hard to rank for, especially when you're starting out. But if you look at low-difficulty relevant terms, that's where you can start. Right? It's again, if we're talking about a garden, you wanna try to plant something simple before going for some big complicated plant that's gonna take a lot more care.
So those are my top takeaways from our conversation. It was an absolute blast.
In, the members-only portion of the show, we talk about a whole bunch of things. I talk about an SEO project I'm working on for this podcast. And we also talk about whether or not you should have your podcast on your main site or not because this is, that's also a question I get a lot. So if you wanna hear that part of the conversation as well as every episode extended and ad-free, you can become a member of Streamline Solopreneur Accelerated, and you can learn more and get all of the show notes over at [streamlined.fm/419].
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.
All right. I am here with Lauren Gaggioli. Lauren, how are you today?
Lauren Gaggioli: I am so good, Joe. Thank you so much for having me here.
Joe Casabona: Thanks for coming on. I'm super psyched. This was serendipitous because we met at Podfest, and we were scheduled to, like, do a little catch-up call. And then on PodMatch, I was like, I need to find an SEO expert. And as if the PodMatch algorithm knew I thought that, it recommended you, and I'm like, this is perfect. So, really psyched to talk to you today about this.
Lauren Gaggioli: Same. It's one of my very favorite things, which is a weird thing to say. A lot of people are, like, don't wanna touch SEO with a 10-foot pole, and my experience just says, why? Why wouldn't you? It's amazing. So I'm really excited to share that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is awesome. Right? I think, like, this is maybe what makes someone really good at what they do. Because, like, when I was a Web Developer, especially, like, in the early days, people would be like, so do you use, like, Dreamweaver to make your websites? And I'm like, I hand code. And they're like, how? And I'm like, you get the best code that way. Like, I write all of my CSS by hand. And they're like, that's wild. I hate that. And I'm like, I love it. Yeah. It's it was just like, you know, makes me feel good. And gives me really clean markup.
Lauren Gaggioli: Absolutely.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Awesome. So let's dive right into the deep end here because I know almost nothing about SEO despite being a Web Developer in my former life.
Lauren Gaggioli: Very common for Web Developers, by the way.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right. And I'm not gonna pretend like I do. Right? I'm like, I didn't offer, like, an SEO package with my web design. I'm like, I don't know SEO. So what is SEO in 2024?
Lauren Gaggioli: So I think, you know, there's a temptation among those of us who really love SEO to just dive right in and give you all the nitty-gritty technical details, which will make a normal human run away screaming. And so I don't do that. Really, SEO is the way you appeal to Google's bots. Bottom line. Right?
SEO, Search Engine Optimization, means that you are attuning your website to the needs of a spider that crawls your site and says, what the heck is the content that lives here? Now a lot of people think that that means that they no longer can be creative. They no longer can write for humans. And I think it's actually exactly the opposite because a lot of what speaks to Google's bots and allows you to raise your hand and say, hey, Google. This is the problem I solve.
When people ask this question, can you send them to my website? It is the boundary. It does draw some boundary lines for how you craft your content, but what you say is still your words, and it just allows you to find more people with greater ease. And so if you want your website to show up in Google search, this is a game you have to play, but it's not trading the, holding the thread of connecting to humans for the thread of speaking to bots. It's about weaving the 2 together and really balancing the 2 and always elevating quality content by holding the human thread just a little tighter. And so you can do both and it is they're not mutually exclusive.
Joe Casabona: I love that. I had my friend, Maddie Osmond, on last year, I think. She released a book called Writing for Humans and Robots. And so I love that you're, like, reinforcing this because = I think you're right. Right? Like, again, old like, before let's talk about before Google. Right? There was a time when, like, Yahoo was the thing. It was Kind of like, yeah. Ask, yeah. Right? And, like, search engines would just, like, count the number of times you said the word on the page and be like, that's the most relevant. And that almost feels like we're gonna talk about AI, obviously, because it's 2024. But it almost feels like that's the game that some like, you know, you see on Twitter. It's like, I wrote 100 articles in 4 minutes using AI, and I'm getting so much more traffic to my website. And I'm like, are you....
Lauren Gaggioli: For how long?
Joe Casabona: Right.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Does that, are people gonna read that and be like, yes. I trust you.
Lauren Gaggioli: Right. Exactly. And I have been having almost an existential crisis around AI because I also write novels. None of them are published. So I don't go looking for them, but I have like 2 novels in the hopper. I love creativity. I have a background as a theater kid. You know, art and how we engage like, the quality of work we're developing, what the human mind can do, and what is worthy of being outsourced.
You know, I was. I've been wrestling with this, and I've been writing it out because I just, that's how I process. And when you really get down to it, Google algorithms are always going to be in alignment with elevating quality content. Can you leverage AI to help you create a structure particularly if, let's say, you have, you know, a learning difference and you need help with that executive function of, like, hierarchical organization. Great. Like, that's a great use of it, but you still need to use your voice. And Google just did a helpful content update.
About a month and a half ago now, and almost everybody's traffic dipped because the machines are learning the difference between human and AI and everybody kind of is going on this downward slide before they learn again and are now elevating quality content again.
And that's just part of the SEO play, but if the natural bend Google's algorithm is always towards elevating quality content, then you really need to be thinking about the human user because Google is going to be looking at these behavior metrics of the users once they hit your site. So it's really important to put humans first and just having content to have content, like, what are we doing? Especially for solopreneurs, I think. You know, we are often like heart-centered and really passionate about how we help. And so it's very important to stay connected to that and not just be trying to leverage like the next black hat strategy because Google very quickly catches on and knocks that down to the bottom again.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I posted on various social networks. Right? Like, what's a word or a phrase that you read that you immediately know, like, AI wrote this? For me, it's Delve, which I got yelled at by somebody because, like, I guess, Delve is very common in Western Africa, which is how Open AI did, like, human-reinforced training. Oh. And so, like, I got, like, yelled at a little bit for that. But, like, I mean, I don't I'm so like, I'm sorry that AI is co-opting the words that you use.
But Delve for me like, I've never used Delve once in my, I say it conversationally, but, like, Delve is never the word I go to when I and, like, it's like plethora. It's just, like it feels like a fancy word, but it's like just say a lot.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. Did I say 2 word. That's for sure. I used to do that. I used to teach at [Inaudible 12:35] . It's was in there.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And so my point, right, is, like, if we can tell, Google can tell even better. Right? So…
Lauren Gaggioli: Or is at least working to catch up. You know? And I think that's the thing. Some people are like, oh, I'm getting away with it. Like, you mentioned earlier, like, white text on a white background, just like keyword stuffing. It was like, yeah, that like, is it good content? Are you doing things in a proper format that is timeless? Like, I always talk about timeless SEO principles. Like, I am not algorithm hacking. And people who are, you're constantly gonna have to phase shift and change the way you create your content.
I am a busy homeschooling mom of 2. I have, you know, consulting clients and I teach courses and I have a community. Like, mama doesn't have time to waste, so give me the thing that I can write the post today, and I can do updates in a year, but I do not wanna recreate every single time I sit down to work on something. If I want Google to find it, I'm just gonna use timeless stuff like quality headers, internal linking structure, and outbound links. You know, there's so many different things that go into that, but I am going to leverage the heck out of the things I know work and have worked for the last 10 years, and that will be what I plant my flag on. And if that changes, I'll adjust down the line, but I want the stuff that's been around a long time.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. And so I wanna get to this next point which you started to say, but I wanna highlight, right, like that the white text on a white background. The link farms. Right? Like, I remember that. Right? Where it's like me and all my friends are like, yeah. I'll just backlink to your website on this page with just links on it. Right? And, like, that Google catches on.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Right? Like, you know, build a better mouse trap, build a smarter mouse. And like you said, like, mom, I don't have time for that. Right? I feel like that that could be like I mean, I guess if I was a mom and not a dad
Lauren Gaggioli: You could still be. You could identify.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That would be the tagline. Right? Like, this is what this show is all about.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Because if you look at, again, Twitter or other social media, right, where people were trying to game the algorithm by posting, like copying Dickie Bush or Justin Welsh. Right? That stopped working Because the algorithm was like, well, we don't want, well, now we just have, like, a monoculture of content here, and we don't want that.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So, yeah. So, love that. You mentioned, like, good headings and things like that. How much does website structure impact SEO in general?
Lauren Gaggioli: A lot. So, and I think especially for your multipassionate solopreneur. So if someone goes to my site, [laurengaggioli.com] what they might notice is that my header is not home, services, blog, about contact. It is home because you wanna have that in your header. It is live with purpose cause I have a course Live in purpose, Learn and love SEO which is an organic marketing pillar page, and support for digital entrepreneurs. And so the thing you have to remember when somebody is coming to your site through Google, you know, we all envision everybody coming to our homepage. That is actually not how they how they come to your site. They crawl in through the window. Right? They come to the more granular pieces of content if they are finding you through search.
And what I wanted, even though I cover a wide breadth of content, is for them to be able to orient themselves immediately and connect their internal monologue of, like, I'm here for purpose work. They could immediately see themselves in the header and go, oh, if I want information on purpose, that's where I go, oh, she does these other things, that's cool, but I want this thing.
And how that relates to hierarchy of your site is that for me, that live with purpose page, let's say, for example, is live dash with dash purpose. That's the URL. [laurengaggioli.com/livewithpurpose]. When you go to any post that I write under that header, it is using that as the stem, and then the post is nested after that. So Google knows on my site that anything after live with purpose is a purpose-related post. Anything after organic marketing or SEO principles is SEO-related. Anything after digital entrepreneurship is a post about digital entrepreneurship. They roll up hierarchically and it all lives under the umbrella of Lauren Gagioli.
And so, a lot of solopreneurs, what I find is that they wanna create all these, like, myriad instances, and then they have these, like, 38 websites with tumbleweeds rolling through them because they think that they need to do that because that's sort of how we do it on social. Right? We have (Joe's running away). Yeah. But, like, Google wants fresh content. Right? And, yes, is there a value if you have the bandwidth to actually maintain and curate that many websites? Great. If you have a team that can crank out quality content in alignment with SEO structure, absolutely, you should do it. But and here's the big but, as solopreneurs, we don't have time for that. Like…
Joe Casabona: We don't have time.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. So [laurengaggioli.com] looks really healthy even if I only post a single post for each of those content buckets every month. And as opposed to 3 different instances where there's only one piece of content going live each month. For those of you with podcasts, they should live on your main website because even if podcasts are notoriously hard to rank, which they are, and I can give you strategies for that, they still contribute to the overall health of the environment so long as your website is hierarchically sound and the foundational structure is in alignment with what Google wants to see.
Joe Casabona: This is amazing. I think we should talk about this in the pro show, streamlined solopreneur accelerated because I get that question a lot. And my answer is not as definitive as yours, but I'll probably defer to your expertise here. This is, my answer is just based on vibes. So, if you want to hear this conversation ad-free in the extended version, you can head over to [streamline.fm/419]. All of the show notes will be there as well as a join button to become a member. Again, you'll get this ad-free extended as well as every episode ad-free and extended. So this is great. Definitely talk about that, on the on the pro show. Because, like, there's, like, a bunch of there's, like, a bunch of things to consider. Right? Like, subdomains also contribute to, like, your domain rank and things like that, I'm told.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. As I understand it and, again, like, I'm not a technical SEO, but as I understand it, subdomains actually are completely separate websites. They might contribute to the health of the core URL, but you actually are creating multiple websites. So it's not as helpful. I considered that path. I was doing research. I was like, do I need purpose at [laurengaggioli.com]? Actually, that's the same thing as coming up with a whole completely different website.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's what I thought as well. So I think it's like yeah. It's like the content in general, separate website, maybe like the domain rank. Like, there's some number that it contributes.
Lauren Gaggioli: That's like your your authority. Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Right. Love that. Oh, this is so fun. That's that that we're getting into, like, the mildly technical area. But, what you said really speaks to me because I was maintaining several different sites. Right? Like, this site is separate, [streamlined.fm], [casabona.org] is just kind of like a resume site for me right now. And in fact, what I ended up doing was I do have a lot I had a lot of, like, good like, well ranking articles over there, like how I configured my Stream Deck is 1. My Sony a6400 is another.
But I want podcast workflows.com, that is my main writing site. That's where I build my authority and expertise in the podcasting space. I want that to be the site. Like, that's the decision that I made in December Of 2023. And so what I ended up doing was move those articles over and did a 301 redirect from casabona.org to podcast workflows. And I'm like, I think this is everything I've read says this is right. And my friend shared with me that he searched Stream Deck Plus yesterday, and I was on the first page of Google for, on podcast workflows for that.
Lauren Gaggioli: That's amazing.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. You probably passed that link to us on. And, yeah, when you understand redirections and you can do it appropriately, there is absolutely value in consolidating and telling Google where you're headed. Did you resubmit in Google Search Console and name your canonical?
Joe Casabona: I named my canonical. I so I use, like, the Yoast SEO to be like, this is the canonical link.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yep.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Perfect.Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Awesome. Yeah. So getting into Google, that's a technical piece. We can talk about that later. That's one of my favorite hacks for folks.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Really smart. Right? Like and this is the move that I do with Medium because I'm gonna try to leverage Medium a little bit too for, like, discovery, but I always publish on my site first. And then import the story because when you do that, Medium marks the story like, marks your URL as the canonical one..
Lauren Gaggioli: Yep. That's the way to use Medium.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Love that. yeah. Great. Yeah. I'm really glad about that because I was like, is this am I messing my world up?
Lauren Gaggioli: Nope. You're doing it exactly right.
Joe Casabona: I’m trying to do the same thing with Substack, but Substack is very much not like that. They're like, no. We don't we don't want that. Yeah. Like, as far as I can tell, you can't mark a URL as canonical on Substack.
Lauren Gaggioli: So you can name yours, mark it as canonical on your blog, submit it to Google Search Console.Wait 2 weeks, and then publish on Substack. And then Google will know that you are canonical even if Substack. Substack will get the ding of duplicate content, not you.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. I kind of inherently wait decide I didn't do the search console thing, but, I was like, I should wait, like, if I was publishing to all three places on the same day. And, with again, with Medium, it's, like, fine. You're marking it like [Inaudible 23:36]
Lauren Gaggioli: Sure. it’s doing it for you.
Joe Casabona: But then I was, like, maybe I should, like, wait a little while. Right?
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So Google knows, like, this is where I want people to go.
Lauren Gaggioli: And this this is why submitting the URL in Google Search Console is so powerful because you’re raising your hand and say concur my site because if you don’t publish on a regular cadence, Google doesn’t know to crawl your site and they're definitely crawling medium and substack. They're larger sites. They're more like Newsy. Right? So they're getting crawled multiple times a day searching for new content. So you wanna be first in line, and and so you can do that. And you can see how fast Google is sending bots to your site because you can go back and check. And as soon as Google says you've been crawled and indexed, then or discovered at least, then you can go and submit the other.
And you'll find every site has, like, a different crawl budget and every site has a different timeline. So it's important to to sort of just double check, get a sense of, like, how quickly Google's, like, interested in being on your site.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah. Google's, like, way more interested in, like, like, crawling newyorktimes.com every MINUTE
Lauren Gaggioli: Sure. For some kinds of content, but that like…
Joe Casabona: Right.
Lauren Gaggioli: That's timely and relevant. It has to be indexed quickly. You know? If I write a post to why is SEO important for small business, does that have to be indexed really quickly? No. But I have trained Google that when I publish, like, it is helpful information. It's human-written. like, all these things are are true. And so it actually will index my stuff pretty quickly now. Like, the turnaround is, like, hours. Whereas a site that hasn't been in the flow, like, Google knows I'm a human. Like, I think he watches, like, how erratic my visits are, that he's like, oh, that that's definitely not programmed.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: And so he responds pretty quickly. So, and I always say he. I call him uncle Google to, like, humanize.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I like Google's I like that. Feel Google feels like a dude a little bit.
Lauren Gaggioli: Oh, for sure. I mean, by dudes. Like, let's be honest.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right. Awesome. I love that. Which brings me to we're, like, wading into the next thing I wanna talk about here. But first, let's take a quick break for our sponsors.
Sponsor: Look. When you have an online-based business, speed and reliability are the most important aspects of a service. Not far behind that is actually owning the website that your business relies on. When you own your website, you're not subject to an algorithm, changing terms, or accidental shutdowns. That's why I'm so excited that Liquid Web is back as a sponsor of How I Built It this year. Their cloud VPS is some of the best-in-class hosting you can get when your business relies on your website. From speed to security and protection to regular backups, with Liquid Web, you can trust your website will remain in tip-top shape.
Not technically savvy? Don't worry. Liquid Web offers fully managed hosting, which means they have a team of knowledgeable experts looking after your website for you so you can focus on running your business. If you need fast, reliable, and secure hosting for your business, check out Liquid Web. Head over to [streamlined.fm/liquidweb] today.
Hey. Real quick before we get back into the episode, I want to tell you about my free newsletter, Podcast Workflows. If you are wondering how I can successfully run this show, plus two other shows, plus run a business, plus run three children, Podcast Workflows is for you. You will get weekly emails with a behind-the-scenes look at how I produce this show, experiments I am trying with other podcasts, and general advice to start, grow, and monetize your podcast. You'll also have the opportunity to become a member and get ad-free extended episodes of this show as well as bonus content. You can do all of that over at [podcastworkflows.com/join]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/join]. Sign up for FREE, today.
Joe Casabona: All right. And we're back. So we're talking a lot about our site content. Right? And, like, getting Google to crawl it and how important SEO is there.
First of all, we are saying Google is Google-like sub-Google for every search engine Is Google, like, the only one that matters?
Lauren Gaggioli: So Google has 8,500,000,000 searches a day. So 100,000 searches a second, and I think owns something like 97% of the search Market. Something crazy like that. So, yeah, appeal to Google, and there's this trickle-down. Right? The native, like, built-in search engines and whatnot.
But the reason Google has surpassed everyone else is because the algorithm is so sophisticated. Like, Joe, you mentioned earlier, you know, everybody else was just like keywords. Look, the keyword is there a lot. There's a reason Google came out ahead, and it's because of this more contextual algorithm, which, of course, we don't know as much about because they're very, very hush-hush secret. But
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Again, the arc of every Google algorithm update is bending towards elevating quality content. So there’s like your E-E-A-T, which is like your authoritativeness and your trustworthiness and your expertise. And your site is sort of, like, some of it's just like, well, we just know if you're a trustworthy site. Like, some of it has to do with having solid code and like a site that loads relatively quickly and, you know, it's mobile responsive and all that. And then some of it is how many backlinks do you get? How many people in your community trust you? And Google really takes all of that into account, and it's this vetting that actually keeps people away from trying to court Google, but it's the vetting that is the reason we trust him. Google is a matchmaker, and he only you know, he he only trusts, like, Yanta, right, From Fiddler. Like, you make a good match.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: And so he only trusts certain websites and 96.5% of web pages on the Internet get 0 traffic from organic search. And so a lot of that just has to do with some technical positioning, with knowing what to focus on. Right? If you feel like you have to do all the things, no, no, imperfect action will get you there. But you do have to do some things and you have to know what the big rocks are. And that's the thing that I think is overwhelming because most SEOs come through a technical lens, and they're like, you have to do all of it.
And there's this feeling of, like, it's like an all or nothing proposition. It's not. You just need to understand what the most important things are and then selectively choose what feels totally doable for you. After you post a post, is it worth your time to copy the URL, go over to Google Search Console, copy it in, and click a button? Like, to me, you just spent how much time creating that post. It is dang worth your time to spend 3 seconds to do that. It's a super easy fix. And so and there's a lot of things like that. Some of them require more time and attention, some less, some are gonna be more in people's wheelhouses and some less, but you as long as you can see it all and go, okay, now I get to pick what's on my charcuterie plate of SEO and what I'm gonna eat, then great. You're gonna start to see, you know, progress, forward progress, upward progress, but it does require a little intentional action, and it does require you saying I'm committing to this for 12 months. And then on the end of 12 months, we'll talk about, you know, we'll do a little pulse check and see where we are.
Joe Casabona: I like that. That's really important. The like, in a world where we get instant gratification for just about everything I'm I'm try I have small kids. I'm really trying to teach them.Right? Like, my daughter, we planted seeds. Like, we ripped out these rose bushes, because they were like a hazard, and they eat like, rose bushes eat everything. Like…
Lauren Gaggioli: and beautiful.
Joe Casabona: They are. Yes.They're and, like, I've got, like, very small children who run full speed in our backyard. And so we ripped them out, and we're planting seeds. And my oldest said, like, hey. Do you think we'll have, like, flowers tomorrow? And I'm like, no. This is gonna take some time, but it's gonna be totally worth it.
Lauren Gaggioli: It's the marshmallow test.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Oh, the marshmallow test. I love that. Yeah. Which is, well, I'll add some, we'll add some context here for the listeners who may have never heard of this. Right? This is the marshmallow test. Correct me if I'm wrong. Right? It's you put a marshmallow on the table. You tell that you tell a kid or an adult. I've heard you can do it for both. Don't if you I'm gonna go away for a little bit. Don't eat the marshmallow. If you don't eat the marshmallow, I'll give you 2 marshmallows when I get back. Right? That's the test. Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. It's like, how much, self-control do you have, basically?
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. So I think it was Martin Seligman who did it, who's, like, the father of positive psychology. And he it and I think they correlated it with later success in life. And that those of and I think solopreneurs we're absolutely in the, like, long term boat. Right? We're building legacy businesses. But and I and I think too, like, this actually dovetails with the conversation around social. Right? So I think a lot of people, they're like, well, I can't add SEO to the mix because I'm already doing all this over here, And I wanna invite you to flip that script. So with social, sure, you could go in and post 5 days a week. I have seen so many posts lately of I've gotta feed the algorithm, so here I am posting a shitty reel. Oops. Sorry.
Joe Casabona: Mhmm. It's cool.
Lauren Gaggioli: Am I allowed to say that?
Joe Casabona: I'll, we'll beep it. I like adding the beeps. Like, it's I think that's a very, like, comedic impact for me.
Lauren Gaggioli: So, you know, I can come in here. I can post this reel, and it's not really anything you want, but the the algorithm's gonna serve it up. And by the way, it's also gonna drop out the bottom of the algorithm in 24 hours. Right? That'll who cares? Who cares that you did that? So, if you…
Joe Casabona: Can I interrupt you for a second? Please. I had someone come on my show, like, a year and a half ago that said the shelf life of a tweet is 21 minutes, and that stayed with me. Oh my god. What's the point of posting anything on Twitter if the shelf life if you don't get retweeted or whatever. Right? Like, sure. If someone else, like, reshares it, which is, like, why we see all this engagement bait, which I'm gonna let you finish your point, and then I'll go on my rant. But, like, that I'm like, what's the point of doing anything if it's only gonna last 21 minutes and no one's gonna see it?
Lauren Gaggioli: So here's let me I'm gonna back way up. All right? So in my first company, I had an ACT and SAT prep company. It was asynchronous. I ultimately grasped the brass ring of the 4-hour work week just in the nick of time because I had a kid. So, yay. And the reason that I was able to do that was because my website was driving 16,000 new users per month through the doors via organic search with 0 ad spend, and they were my target market because they were searching for the things I had provided. Questions like, when should I take the ACT? When should I take the SAT? When are the test dates? All these questions that I had answered and cultivated and curated over time. Okay? So I had for 2 years because Google watched what I did and went, oh, she takes care of these people. Right? This is what her content's oriented towards. People stay on this site. I host my, courses on my website. So those behavior metrics, you can see people coming back constantly to log in and take advantage of those courses. So I was able to send emails and make money.
Now that was 3 years in, right, that that sort of tipped because I had no idea what I was doing. I was just throwing spaghetti at the walls. But in back solving, I was able to, like, create a more condensed path there.
So here's the thing. Would you rather spend 5 hours on a post that could get you thousands of hits per month over 2 years? And in today's SEO space, you're gonna have to, like, update it every year, but we all know updating doesn't take, you know, as much time. So,If you do that, right, 5 hours of time, and it can feed you. Right? Like, not just like, oh, someone might like it. Like, it can actually feed you for years, Or would you rather spend, I don't know, 30 minutes for a 24-hour cycle and pour 30 more minutes in and 24 hours? Like, you can start to do the math and say, well, after 10 of those 30-minute segments, I've got 10 days, you know, of somebody maybe engaging.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Lauren Gaggioli: Like, the trade-off suddenly becomes really clear. And I think as entrepreneurs, we overestimate the or underestimate rather the value of 15-30 minutes. Right? If we can sit and focus and create something that can help people for years to come, to me, that's what I'm in business to do.
And I love social for social's sake, but I don't do it, quote, right for business because I don't care. Like, I have so many friends who, like, they're 100 of 1000 of followers. They're just getting shut out of those pages and there's nothing they can do. Like, I wanna play on turf I own and I control. And a self-hosted site, that is where you do it. Right? Like, I have my systems there locked down. I am not paying for a storefront on Main Street. I am paying for a storefront in Google SERPs, and that is my investment to have a business and every solid business has investments. And so my storefront is a digital one and I take it very seriously and I want it to be as clean and beautiful as if you were walking down Main Street and saw, you know, a plate glass window with beautiful offerings. I just happen to play in the online space, which is far more effective and economical, and I can reach more people. I'm not geographically bound at all, but social is, like, not that. And so we have to be really careful about when we're allocating time and the investment that we are putting towards stuff. We need to think about it.
So if you create content for your site, a really long, robust blog post that you spend 5 hours on, guess what? You can chunk that up and start feeding it into social if social's part of your strategy, for sure. I'm not saying don't do social. I'm just saying do it with open eyes and Also this, like, slot machine impulse of, like, but I might go viral. What would happen if you go viral right now as a solopreneur? Like
Joe Casabona: Literally nothing.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. You let's say everybody's banging down your door. Now they absolutely need you. Cool. You're one person. How do you facilitate that? Like, I want the right fit person at the right fit time when they know they need me and I'm right there saying, welcome. I'm here with open arms. How can I help you? I wanna deal individual to individual, human to human. I don't want the masses.
And there's a tipping point where you have enough traffic coming to you that the people who are self-selecting out don't impact your bottom line. Right? Like, you do need a certain volume because you're not gonna be the right fit for every person, but it's not that, like, viral impulse.
You know what? There's a switch that flips, and I actually had it happen for the first time this week where you suddenly realized you just made a sale on the Internet from a stranger. It's like the best moment in your business. That is a huge moment. I made $25 because I have like a $25 free or $25, group coaching session like your first one. You get to come in for just $25 and it's you get at least 15 minutes. It's like a mastermind group coaching call.
Joe Casabona: Nice.
Lauren Gaggioli: And it worked because I thought about the human who searched the transactional query. They have their credit card in hand. They're looking at all these pages where people are, like, come join my thing for, you know, a small investment of $42100 a year. Like you have to be here every single week. And I was, like, well, what if I gave you, like, a really easy yes and we can meet each other and see if this is the right fit? And, like, I updated the page on Sunday. It had been climbing for a year. I revamped it, updated it, and made it more timely and relevant the next day within 24 hours.
Now, it's a year and 24 hours..Right? So SEO is that long play, but I was watching the traffic and I went, okay. This is the tipping point and pushed it out. And that is the power of it because that person doesn't know my name. That person wasn't like Lauren Gaggioli who I saw somewhere else. That person was like, I need a mastermind, and they found me. And now they have handed me money to help them, and I get to meet someone new. Like, that's the coolest part. Right? And So I think we have to step back from all the strategies, all the you gotta do this. You gotta do that. No. You gotta choose what's gonna serve your ideal clients and start there and start small. And for a while, you're gonna have to hoof it and really, like, maintain connections and network and all these things. Go to conferences. Yes. And these can be working in parallel, and then at some point, that ease comes in. And then you go, oh, yes. This is the magic.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I'm on this page right now. I'm like, you just blew my mind. I'm gonna offline, I'm gonna ask you, like, what tool you're using? Because this is a great idea.
Lauren Gaggioli: Thank you.
Joe Casabona: Like because I get, like, you know, inbound coaching requests, and I'm usually like, oh, yeah. Like, we can do, like, a power hour for $500, but, like, I've noticed that people who are reaching out to me, especially podcasters who are just getting started, not ready for $500.
Lauren Gaggioli: No.
Joe Casabona: And so but but I'm also like, I can't I don't feel like I can give them the amount of time they need unless I charge that. And, like, a schedule oh, yeah. What are you gonna say? I'm ready for this.
Lauren Gaggioli: I was gonna say, so I play in the same space. I love solopreneurs. Like, I have such a heart for people, like, grinding it out, side hustling their way at 2 AM to their big beautiful dream from, like, the corner of their guest bedroom. Like, that is like, that's how I got started. I absolutely love these people, and they have no money to get started usually. Right? Especially if they're in that really tricky place where they've left the job, but now they're, like, not yet tipped Totally towards the scalable offerings.
So what I do is I give them payment plans. And so, like, I'm literally building a website that's gonna be able to put a course on. That's the next phase for a client. She's gonna take me up on a 24-month payment plan because I'm not gonna not charge my worth. But also I know that I need to make it accessible. And so, like, getting creative, trusting other people, and I will say I'm very lucky. I am not the breadwinner in my family. Like, I get to play. And that's so cool. And also, I have childcare that's free because my in-laws are angels. Like
Joe Casabona: Oh, that's amazing.
Lauren Gaggioli: There's a lot that works for me in this that allows me to do that. So everybody has a different, like, family status that, that, you know, makes that nest more or less feasible for them. But especially if you're just getting started, focus on that human-to-human. Get one person through the door. That's the that's the magic, but we can talk for you about creative opportunities.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: I think there's a lot there.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Awesome. And I mean and to that note, right, like, yes, I'm very lucky. My wife is a nurse, and she, like, the, I think I technically pay us more, but, like, also, like, she has the health insurance.
Lauren Gaggioli:Health insurance. Oh my god. Like, I don't know that I would be an entrepreneur if my husband didn't carry it.
Joe Casabona: I certainly wouldn't. I'm like I mean, like, family of 5….
Lauren Gaggioli: 3 kids?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right. And, like, in on the East Coast, like, I've I feel it's just, like, very expensive. My health insurance like, this is how crazy it is. Like, we have really because she's a nurse, really good health insurance. And if I do a 30-minute session with my therapist, they cover, like, 80% of it. And if I do a 40-minute session with my therapist, they cover 6% of it. I'm like, what?
Lauren Gaggioli: Oh my gosh.
Joe Casabona: Like, it's just, like, confusing nonsense.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. Like, it's just one get me started on insurance. I'm like, can somebody please redo this? It's terrible.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And, like, my therapist is awesome and was like, no. No. This was this is like but, like, if my wife didn't carry the insurance, like, I don't I wouldn't be able to make this work, I don't think. So, like
Lauren Gaggioli: I agree. Yeah.
Joe Casabona: We're all in different stages and have different things. Right? My father-in-law is awesome. He picks up my son from preschool 2 days a week, 2 out of the 3 days a week.
Lauren Gaggioli: That's awesome.
Joe Casabona: But, also, like, if you don't have any money coming in the door, then, like, experimenting, like, with what Lauren was just talking about is a way to maybe get some money in the door. Right? Focusing on that human-to-human and not just looking at everybody who comes through as, like, how do you impact my bottom line? Right? That's like using AI to write content. Right? You're not thinking about the human.
Lauren Gaggioli: We wanna, humans are problem solvers, and this is why Google actually works so well. So entrepreneurs are problem solvers. We provide a solution to a problem. And so when we do that and people go to Google with problems, a, they know they have, and, b, they are ready to solve, such that they just type something into Google to help them solve a problem.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Lauren Gaggioli: Like, in terms of where you are in the buyer's journey, that's perfect. Right? Like, whereas social, you're, like, chucking it out and you're like, I hope the right person finds this right now. Right in this It's
Joe Casabona: like yelling on the same corner.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. We are not buskers. Like Yeah.
Joe Casabona: We are not buskers.
Lauren Gaggioli: like. Do not fo that
Joe Casabona: Yeah. it's like less, like, worse than going door to door. Right? Like, at least someone who, like, goes comes to my door trying to sell solar panels, like, knows I owe probably knows I own the house. I always tell them I rent so that they stop bothering me. But yeah. But, like, you know, someone also yelled at me at, like, a farmer's market. They're like, hey. You want solar panels? I'm like, you know nothing about me.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. And, also, you're at a farmer's market. Like, that's where eco-friendly, but goodness.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love this. I love this whole conversation. I know that we're coming up on time.
Here are the 2 pieces or the 2 kind of actionable things I would love to learn from you for our audience. One is, like, how do I figure I'll give them both to you and then we can kind of answer it kinda long or what we need. Yeah. How do I figure out what keywords to focus on, and how much content should I create? Like, do I need to publish every day? Is it
Lauren Gaggioli: No. Yeah. Heavens, no. Okay. First of all, SEO is self-care for you. I think so often we hear it and we think, oh my god. I'm gonna have to do so much, and it's gonna go on forever and ever and ever. And I'm just gonna have to keep creating.
Lauren Gaggioli: No. If you do it well and you do it strategically, it will feed you for a very, very, very long time with you doing nothing else. It gives you permission to stand away and aside from your business such that you are still driving traffic and making money because, hopefully, after a year or 2, you now have some scalable offerings, some passive offerings, but don't start there. You will be able to have more freedom. This is actually going to take things off your to-do list. And there are very few promises in the solopreneur space where it's like, do less. You'll get to do less. Everything is, like, I start to do this, and now I'm committed, and I have to do this for forever and I you know, until I die. So that's one of the reasons I love SEO. It's so calming and grounding.
Joe Casabona: Love that.
Lauren Gaggioli: So the right cadence is what works for you. The ideal cadence is at least every 2 weeks, you're publishing a robust blog post. And done, you know, in true SEO, like, best practices. if you search on page SEO best practices, you will find a slew of things that you maybe never even thought about if you've never looked at this. But what content to create, that comes from doing robust keyword research. And I will be honest, I always have been an Ahrefs girl. So Ahrefs had a free keyword generator that I loved. It was so good.
It gave really granular detail. Something about how they, like, slice and dice their data made it hopeful. Right? Like, there was a lot of green in the mix, which if anybody's done keyword research, they know it's like a field of red and, like, there's no opportunity. So I loved it. And then they completely gutted it, like, 2 weeks ago. And I've built this into my SEO course, by the way. It's like…
Joe Casabona: Oooh. That's right.
Lauren Gaggioli: And their lowest thing is $100 a month. I'm like, oh, come on, friends.
Joe Casabona: That's tough. I should mention at this point, full disclosure, that Ahrefs has formally sponsored this podcast. So just full disclosure for anybody listening, this is not an endorsement. Yeah.
Lauren Gaggioli: Well, if you have a person I can talk to because I've emailed and they're like, yeah. We just don't have anything for you. Like I'll…
Joe Casabona: I'll send them your way.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. Perfect. I'm glad we're having this conversation. Yeah. So I will tell you, Mangools, I've done some keyword research comparisons. Like, I've done a couple of free trials compared a couple of singular keywords, to see how the data lined up. Mangools is good, but it even their tent-like, they cap you at a certain number of keywords, which I don't love when you're in that flow. Like, I wanna be able to just go. So Mangools, they have a 10-day free trial, and then it's, like, $17 a month for their lowest tier. So if you wanted to get in there, you can turn it off and on. Like, once you have the keywords, you'll be able to see, like, what to focus on.
Joe Casabona: That's what I did with Ahrefs when I, did the streamline solopreneur thing, and I was looking for the right keywords to try to rank on there, I paid for it a month and then I disabled it.
Lauren Gaggioli: Yeah. So if you've got the $100, go with Ahrefs. I love their dataset. But if you don't, then Mangools is good. There is what was the other one? Oh, Semrush has I hate their interface. Like, it is scary for me. I don't love the way they lay. It's just too much, but if you can, like, get through that, if you're not, you know, verse to technical kind of layouts, then that's a good one. They have a free trial as well. So, but get in there, get some data, and remember, keyword difficulty is more important than, volume. And so you wanna start to get that, volume. And so you wanna start to get on the page. Right? You wanna start to rank. And so think of, like, the Dave Ramsey, Debt Snowball. Start with The littlest one and pay it off and go. Same idea and it all orients around keyword difficulty.
Think about the questions your ideal client asks. Don't sell them on that. Give them the free offer on that one. And then also think about your paid offerings and optimize your sales pages. And there, you can make a pitch to sell because those are transactional queries that people show up with a credit card for. But there's so much more that I wanna say, and I can't because we don't have time. So, if you wanna learn more, I do have a course, organic marketing ecosystem. I teach you the whole shoot and match. So…
Joe Casabona: Awesome.
Lauren Gaggioli: If that's something you're interested in, by all means, get in touch
Joe Casabona: That will be in the show notes with everything we talked about, including all those great tools over at [streamlined.fm/419]. We are approaching time. I think we're gonna have to record the pro show later.
Lauren Gaggioli: Sounds good.
Joe Casabona: So, Lauren, thanks so much for spending time with us today. This was I mean, it was so good that I didn't even cut it off in time to record the whole episode. So we're gonna have to have you come back for part 2. Thank you so much. If people wanna learn more about you, where can they find you?
Lauren Gaggioli: So everything is at [laurengaggioli.com]. However, if you're curious about that course, organic marketing ecosystem.com is where you can go and, take advantage of the SEO course and it just points to a page on my website. So remember, I have one website. Everything lives at [laurengaggioli.com]. There's also at [laurengaggioli.com/mastermind]. If you wanna see the page Joe was referencing, that's where, like, the 25 group dollar group coaching call and everything is. So if you wanna see sort of how the sausage is made, that's a good one to go to for a sales page. And be sure to check out the post. You'll learn a lot just by kind of looking at how I do it, even if you're not interested in the content per se.
Joe Casabona: Love it. Again, [streamlined.fm/419]. We'll get that pro show for you. I know I promised it. We'll get it to you eventually. So if you wanna sign up, you can head over there as well.
Lauren, thanks so much for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
Lauren Gaggioli: This was so fun. Thank you, Joe.
Joe Casabona: And thank you for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.