Diana Richardson |Putting Your Personality In Your Content

Diana Richardson

Social Media Community Manager of SEMrush

SEO, SEM, Social Media, Digital Marketing strategy or wine

Show Notes

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianarich013?lang=en 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8D%B7-diana-richardson-8965a317 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/semrush?trk=public_profile_topcard-current-company

We talked with Diana Richardson, a social media community Manager of SEMrush, about her journey and how she started with her business SEMrush. For over 14 years, she has been a digital marketer, and has been working for and with businesses in all shapes and sizes. She is ready to customize strategies through her analytical, organizational and administrative way of thinking.

You can always visit her website or follow her through her social media account. Through her skills in regards to social media and digital marketing, she can help you with SEO ranking and build brand awareness for your online business.

Voice Over: The Publishing for Profit podcast is brought to you by Ghostwriters Encode. Earn more money by publishing better content and learn how to increase your thought leadership so you could build your brand. Head over to ghostwritersandco.com. For more information that’s ghostwritersandco.com.

And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel: Hello, and welcome to the Publishing for Profit Podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. Today, we are interviewing Diana Richardson who is part of the SEMrush Social Media and SEO team there. And she’s actually hosts the Twitter chats for a SEMrush. If you don’t know SEMrush, it is a comprehensive SEO tool to help you analyze and make better decisions in terms of your digital marketing.

That’s a great conversation we have. I would talk about how Diana got into digital marketing and how she transitioned over to SEMrush; how it is working for such a great organization. It’s an organization that I’ve personally watched from afar and really admire their culture and what they do for the whole SEO community.

Great conversation. If you are looking to improve your SEO game, increase your rankings, then this really is the podcast for you. Diana has such a wealth of knowledge, and she shares it. So yes. So, I don’t know, great conversation. So without further ado here is Diana.

Diana, thank you so much for being on the show.

How are you today? 

Diana: I’m great. I’m really happy we’re recording this on a Friday. So it’s nice to wrap up the week with you, I think. This is a really nice end to the week. 

Joel: I’m very jealous of your wine tour that you’re doing tomorrow. And I’m sure the audience is as well because especially right now in Canada, all of that is shut down.

So, I will live vicariously through you. 

Diana: Okay. Well, if you haven’t yet followed me on Instagram and you’ll be sure to see some wine pictures

Joel: I will.

Diana: I’m in Texas for the podcast listeners, and Texas is a little bit more opened up. However, the wineries are outside. So even if we were closed for indoor stuff, we are still staying safe. But yes, my boyfriend and I were going to a winery, or two, this upcoming weekend; it’s our first time doing that sort of fun adventure in a while. So it’ll be nice. 

Joel: That’s awesome. So, I want to go back. You’re obviously being in digital marketing for a while and very experienced. Can you talk a little bit about your journey through digital marketing? 

Diana: Well, I landed in digital marketing because I answered an ad in a newspaper.

Joel: It seems ironic to me. I don’t know. 

Diana: Well, it is now. But in the olden times of my career indeed didn’t exist. I am older than that, indeed. I’m actually older than Google too. So, that’s okay though. But you know, my college career was circled around marketing and communications and theater, actually. And so it actually worked out really nicely to land in a path and it was a new adventure. I got a job with a company that was transitioning away from print to digital.

So I got to see that process and I got to be part of a startup business at that time. And when search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising and even website development was still so new especially for the industries that I was working with at the time, I was asked regularly like, “Why do I need a website and why do I need to be on Google?”

I hope if you’re asking yourself that question now, please DM me on Twitter. Let me help you. And if you don’t know what a DM on Twitter is, then Lord help you. But it’s been interesting evolving with the SEO world kind of in, as it has evolved, and it’s fascinating to see what has changed and what hasn’t and how many more options we have for ranking potential that we didn’t in the very beginning and how complex it’s gotten, but still sticking to the foundations of quality and helpfulness.

And if you think about it, like Google and Bing’s business model, which I’ve seen Bing be a million different things in my career too. But girls have always been there, and if you think about their business model, their business model is to provide you, this searcher, with something that is helpful. So you will come back. So you won’t switch to Bing, so you won’t go to DuckDuckGo. So it behooves them, as to benefit their business. To make sure that what they’re ranking is of quality and is relevant so that you keep coming back for more. And that’s been their business model since day one; they’re an index of good stuff, and they want to give you the good stuff, and they shoo away the crap. That’s their job. So it’s interesting to see that evolution too. 

Joel: I think you’ve hit on a very interesting point that I don’t think a lot of people really understand, like, because I like to simplify things. Google is really just a way of getting somebody information that they’re looking for, right? And so if you are that person who has that information, you are you may not rank initially, because there may be somebody who does all these tricks and tips and things to Google and to try and game Google a little bit, but ultimately you’re going to be a winner because you are providing value to that end user, which is exactly as you said, “Those other people that Google are trying to serve.”

Diana: That, and that’s Google’s purpose. Google was invented to do that. It is interesting to think about Google at that level, because it’s such a conglomeration, right? Like it’s just this huge corporation. It’s this huge conglomerate; I think I just combined two words into one, but whatever.

You know, this monolith of an entity and, but at the core of it, it’s a database for you and they have become this monolith because of the fact that they’ve been able to produce, well, they’ve had really good marketing, let’s be honest, especially at the beginning, and, but they’ve been able to secure their place in our world because they’ve stuck to that poor value of providing quality results to answer your queries.

Now, a lot of that has changed, like our query behaviour has even changed over time. In the beginning, we would just type, “Shoes,”and we would… because we didn’t know any better. Like the internet, the search engines were still new. We kind of expected it to read our minds and now we communicate to each other a lot better.

So our results are so back in the day, back in my agency days, I would have clients ask me, “Why aren’t I showing up on the first page of Google for lawnmower?” And I would have to explain to someone searching, “Lawnmower,” and their head knows what they want. Google is a machine. Google that can’t read your mind.

You have to be more specific. Even back in those times you had to specify things like, “Lawnmowers for sale San Antonio.” Like Google hadn’t come into the phase where it can tell your geography and it hadn’t gone into so much personalization like it is now. So I had to explain a lot that Google was not a mind reader and you have to almost explain to it what you want back.

And it’s obvious Google has evolved a lot in that front and can pretty much read our minds or listen to our voices and get us what we want. But I think the communication between us as users and the search engines have synced up too. So we’ve evolved as well. Go figure. 

Joel: Can you tell me a little bit about what drew you, and what still draws you to digital marketing?

Because I know for myself it was something I sort of fell into. I’d never… Maybe I don’t think anyone grows up thinking, “I’m going to be a digital marketer.” Maybe they do these days.

Diana: Maybe now they might.

Joel: But, for me, myself, I definitely… it was something I dip my toe in, and I was like, “Oh, this is really cool.”

So, can you tell me about what you find so fascinating and interesting about digital marketing?

Diana: What was it that you found so cool? So like dipping your toe in, did you get a chance to see your effect on websites? Or what did you find really cool?

Joel: For me? I think it’s the combination of art and science that I really like. As it’s part of analytics; analytics is very important especially in SEO, social media, really actually all in, in all digital media.

Diana: If you can track it, it’s probably important. 

Joel: Exactly. But there is a little bit of art, and you need to use your creativity and your brain to get the results. So it’s kind of like, it’s a problem solving, but also really being able to see the results and really being speeding up to see specifically what worked, what didn’t. That’s sort of like… I think that’s what really drew me in what I found interesting.

Diana: Mine’s very similar. And because I knew I wanted to do something in marketing, because I love people and I love understanding people’s stories. I wish I had taken a consumer psychology class. I don’t know why I didn’t. Because it would be perfect for what I do now, and I feel like a consumer psychologist through keyword research. And I really found that I loved the customer journey and I loved understanding how people were searching and how I could react to that through my website or my client’s website or something.

I think as SEO has gotten a lot more creative over the years, thinking back to my early career, it was very churn and burn. I was writing very stale copies just over and over again because we worked with the same types of clients. And I wish at that point I had had a little bit more of a storytelling background because now it is so important as a conversion strategy. Almost not just an optimization strategy, but to get that person into your world and bring them in and get them to convert. You absolutely have to have that art.

11:13 And I love creativity too. I also love that, “No day is the same.” I am never. Even when I was doing the churn and burn websites, no day was the same. We are always on our toes. No strategy was the same for every website; even though they were very similar websites for very similar clients, no website performed the same.

I always said, “Websites and PPC campaigns take on their own personalities. And there’s not a great way to compare one to the other because there’s just so many factors involved, including that personality. There’s just an X factor, sometimes, that gets website A and copy of website A, it’s performed differently. That was something that I just would always say a lot that, “Oh, that PPC campaigns got a personality of its own. Give it three months to develop a personality.” That’s kind of how I would talk about it. And I love that part of it too. It’s just unique every day.

I love the community. I love being able to talk to people and nerd out about Google and H-tags and all tags, then content length and backlinks. And like what Google Analytics is doing and how I love my increase in new users. It’s just fun to talk to people at that level because everybody else glazes over where things you work for Google, where things you can fix the router.

Joel: Yes. Can you talk a little bit, because you went from a very small agency of seven people into like an international company with, that was SEM Rush, can you talk a little bit about your experience, I guess, transitioning over and what you do today?

Diana: Yes. So my very first SEO job was with another big company. And when I left there, I made a conscious decision that I was, kind of, a little over like corporate America for a time; I needed a break. And I purposely sought out a job with a boutique agency, and I was very drawn to the one that hired me. They were an instant work family. We’re still great friends to this day. It was beautiful.

And that sort of collaboration was… I learned so much from that collaboration with having a small team; I learned so much about design, graphic design, storytelling, branding, making commercials. I learned so much about other aspects of marketing, and that is exactly what was like feeding my soul.

They also said, “You’re the only digital marketer; do with all your stuff.” So I got to learn more about social media, learn more about email funnels. And so I got, because I got to be hands-on in finding new tactics, because it was just me; I was the digital marketing director. That was just me.

Well, I’m still practicing SEO and PPC. I still got to do the things, the tried and true things I was already good at while still being able to learn and play. My motivation for finding a remote… I started with my motivation for starting with looking for a remote position. And, like we mentioned, I moved from Virginia to Texas and the boutique agency I was working with couldn’t work really remotely, so I needed a remote position. And I have been a part of the summer-ish Twitter chat and part of the summer-ish brand for years because I’ve used the tool. Like I used it at my last two jobs before I worked here. So huge fans of the brand out of the gates. And I became friends with the person who hosted the Twitter chat; I’m the one who has the Twitter chat now. And we were just talking one day and she mentioned she was trying to find a social media manager who knew or had an SEO background. And I said, “That is me.”

It was literally networking that got me this job. Whatever I have done in this universe to point me in this direction, I’m glad I did it because this is amazing. And working with an international company has been fascinating. I have no one here in Texas with me. Everyone is across the U S and throughout Europe and Russia and all sorts of countries. And it’s been culturally very fascinating. My mornings are all meetings because I have to be in the same time zone as the other half of my team. But then I get the afternoon kind of to myself and to get my work done or to cook a meal for an hour and then come back. And it’s a really nice flow.

The culture at SEMrush is amazing. It starts with the top. It starts with Oleg and Eugene are right at the top and they foster a wonderful culture of us being ourselves. And they want us to play and experiment and have personality and be a part of the community. The community, the SEO, and digital marketing community is a foundational element to SEM Rush. It’s core, it’s vital, we value it more than I have seen any other brand value their audience.

Even the people in our community don’t use our tools, we still value that input in that conversation and that insight and their brains. They’re amazing people. And it’s just a really incredible culture to be a part of, and then to be kind of on the front lines and speaking to that community has been amazing; I’m exhausted, but it’s amazing.

Joel: And why is SEMrush a good tool? And I guess just to preface this, I agree. I have followed SEMrush for many years and I love the tools. I love the company. And the culture does seem amazing.

Diana: I have both perspectives now.

Joel: Yes. But why is it a good tool for small businesses?

Diana: I love it. And I’ve loved it from the beginning because it is a workflow based tool. It isn’t a piece here, a piece there, it thinks all kinds of integrate together. They flow together. You can add this into this and then export it into Trello, or it syncs up with Google. And like there’s a lot of really smart steps that we’ve taken away from the marketer I’ve put into the tool. And I think that, if you’re a small business owner and you don’t have an extensive marketing team, this is one tool that you could handle. And there’s a lot of nuances. There’s a big learning curve with SEMrush we are aware of. Because it’s a very robust tool and all these little things you can just keep clicking and something new happens.

We did that on purpose because digital marketing is not stagnant. And how many freaking tabs do you have open? Because you have 17 different stupid tools open to do your daily workflow, and we wanted to get rid of that. We wanted to have it built into one, and we wanted it to be based on data because you were, you know, you were just saying how important data is to this business.

So that’s why I think it’s valuable. I know it’s pricey. I know there’s a learning curve to it, but it is worth it as a solitary tool because it’ll work; work you through your processes.

It’s Friday afternoon and my mouth is not working great today.

Joel: No. You’re doing great.

Diana: Unfortunate when you’re recording a podcast, but I’m trying.

Joel: No. You’re doing wonderful. I’m sure you get this question a lot and it may seem like a lazy question, but I think it’s important because a lot of people, you talk about H tags and metadata, and they just think it’s gibberish, right? And they don’t really care about all that stuff. They just want results. So what if, for our listeners who, maybe, they don’t want to dive deep into SEO, they just want the results, what are the couple key things that they can do to improve the SEO and get the results that they want?

Diana: Well, first of all, you’re going to have to put in the work, if you want the results just like working out. There’s no magic pill. Our tool does not optimize your website. You have to do it or have somebody else do it. The areas I would say to start with are the speed of your website because speed has been an important factor for a while now, but now that mobile usage is what it is. It’s just so much more important. And now Google is coming out with these user core web vitals… what am I trying to say… user experience. There we go. User experience signals because people don’t have patience for slow loading websites. And so a high quality website is going to be the fastest one. The one that can compress their images, the one that can compress their code and things like that and get that faster. So I would put that as a priority. I would also make sure things like your content doesn’t shift because how many times have you been on like a recipe website, and you click, it says like, “Jump to recipe,” and you click it and it opens up a stupid ad or video that you didn’t mean to click on. And so that happens to me all the time. I love cooking, but recipe websites drive me crazy.

Sometimes they’re just printed out like old-school print out, so I don’t have to deal with the website. So your content stability… make sure your content is stable and not shifting. I would prioritize those two technical things and then prioritize putting your personality into your contents. Yes, you have title tags. Yes, you have H tags. Yes, you have alt tags. Those are all important elements to a website and you’re going to need to figure out what those are at some point. But if you don’t have a personality on your website, I don’t care what you rank. You can rank number zero. I don’t care. If you have no personality, no one is doing business with you. So prior to, make your site fast, and make it good to use. Make it fun to use, and have some personality. 

Joel: I think that ties into storytelling. Because when I think of SEO, a lot of people I talk about SEO, they’re like, “Just do what your competitors are doing. Just do it better. So just write more content, have more pages, right?

Diana: I made a dollar every time, you heard that? Fun fact.

Joel: Yes. So how should storytelling tie into SEO? 

Diana: Storytelling is where you should start with SEO. And because you can. I like to tell the story first and then come back and optimize for keywords and topics and questions. In a world where everyone is online, every business is online, all of your competitors are online and everyone starts their customer journey online, you need to stand out in a way beyond rankings. Because you do business with the number one ranking website all the time? No. Because sometimes I don’t like them. So I go on to the next. And that is a very common user behavior.

And you have to be able to make that connection with your audience. Don’t think of them as customers. Don’t think of them as users. Think of them as your community, as your audience and talk to them. Create the audience personas and have a conversation with them through your website copy. through your description tags; that’s the little blurb that shows up in Google. Have a conversation. Be yourself. Cuss. If that’s your brand, do it. Be different. Be you and be different. And I think that’s how you can do it better; I hate it when people say, “Do it better.” Because like, “What the crap does that actually mean? Do it better than my competitors.” Like, “Okay.”

But you can be you. You can do it better by being you and being unique. That’s how I incorporated it.

Joel: Okay.

Diana: Because, then again, you tell your story and then come back with your keyword phrases and you can make some swaps, so you can include it in an H-tag, or you can make the optimization changes. But tell the story first and don’t optimize this and get rid of the storytelling.

Don’t get rid of your personality just for keywords. 

23:49 Joel: What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see small businesses make when it comes to SEO? 

Diana: I’m not thinking about it from the beginning of building their website. They want, especially in what we just experienced in this last year with a lot of businesses needing to rush, to be online because their stores, their physical stores were closed. They rushed the process. Rushing through it and using a template, Wix, Squarespace, whatever is fine.

You can certainly use those templates, but you have to think about how you’re going to structure your website from the beginning, you have to think about the user’s journey through your website from the beginning. You thought very clearly, as a business owner, where you wanted to place your business, the physical location. You scouted locations. You, toward buildings. You chose your location for a reason. The same mindset has to go into your website and SEO can not be something you do once the website is live. It has to start in the very beginning. 

Joel:  I think that’s actually a really good point because you’re right. People think about physical location. They think about traffic, but they don’t necessarily put the same effort into their online.

Diana: And let me just put this nugget out there: Your website, it is now your business. Your physical business is almost going to become the secondary source now. Your website is your primary way of doing business and that’s how you should prioritize it. 

Joel: Mmm. Yes. I know, that’s important too. How do you prevent overwhelm? Because I know you do social media, you do SEO. How does a business think about these things without getting too overwhelmed with all these different tasks, and what should they prioritize? 

Diana: Yes. It’s one step at a time because it is very overwhelming. Even for somebody who has been doing it right for a long time. It’s a lot. It is. You have so many channels to be on now outside of SEO, outside of social media. Now you have video content and short video content. You have Tik-Tok. You have emails. You got emails, it’s still a very significant functional way of doing marketing. I’ve heard email is dead for decades, and it still is a great source of leads because it’s a terrific way to communicate with your core audience, the people who are engaging with your brand.

I would say, prioritize your tasks based on your business goals. So are you needing sales right away? Are you a brand new brand and you just need some brand awareness and exposure and you know sales will come later? Are you needing to hire? What are your business goals? Frame your digital marketing strategy around that.

And then If you are going to run some paid ads right now, while your SEO builds momentum then okay. Then optimize your paid search ads because that’s where your budget is being spent. If you’re prioritizing social media, then you don’t worry about the paid search ads, necessarily, right now.

You just have to prioritize based on what you’re trying to do. There’s no direct answer to that. It has to be… you have to understand the purpose of the channels, I think. For example… one thing that I do love about, like search engine marketing is it’s a very, I’m there when you need me kind of marketing as opposed to television or radio, which is just you happened to be listening or watching this channel and that my commercial is on. You appear in the search engines because someone was seeking you out. I’ve always loved that about it, and I think it’s a smart way to spend like advertising dollars because you’re not just investing in arbitrary ears or eyes on anything. Like someone had to Google something sorta close to you for you to be there. So they’re already kind of pre registered as qualified person to be a part of your world. If you’re looking for something like sales and you need to be present because people are searching for your products on the search engines in there, but if your makeup brands have a lot of weight on Instagram. So maybe if you’re looking for sales, start running Instagram shopping ads like Facebook lead gen ads, and things like that, and Tik-Tok. I think Tik-Tok just released their paid advertising platform. So you have to be where your audience is and where they’re doing the action you want.

Joel: On the topic of paid ads, I’ll preface this and sort of frame this question in what I do, and you can tell me if this is a good idea or if I should change my strategy, but how…

Diana: Uh-oh.

Joel: … I work with a lot of companies that are new to the online world. They’ve done a lot of in-person networking or referrals, right? And so they’re just trying to get their SEO started. So tell me, what I do is generally start having to do an ad campaign to boost sales right away, and generally I do 80% marketing effort on the paid search, and then 20% on SEO. And then as the SEO gains traction and raises there in the rankings, then I decrease the budget and put that more into SEO. Is that a good way to look at paid search or do you have a different way of doing search? 

Diana: So it depends, classic answer. If you’re getting the results, if you’re achieving the results that your client wants through paid, then you paid. You shouldn’t be backing down on budget if it’s succeeding. Now there are ways to certainly optimize that budget so you can spend less and get better results; that was always my goal when I was running paid ads. I was working really hard to increase the ad, right? The ad quality, and the click-through rates, and the landing page quality because I wanted to decrease my CPC, I could spend less budget or keep the same budget and get more action. But if it’s working, then there’s no reason to shift the budget.

Now I would say like a lot of the SEO work for my world happens at the beginning. But as we know, you can do as much as you fricking possibly can in the beginning, and it’s still up to the search engines to crawl, re crawl, get to know you, shift the rankings to include you, and all of that takes months, months, months. But there’s a lot of really strategic ways you can use even small budgets in paid search. So I think it’s a very valuable asset. I love all the control that you have with paid ads. And if you can achieve success, then stick with it. There’s no reason to shift budget just because your organic rankings are improving.

Joel: Mmm. For people who are unsure about SEO or don’t know how it works or why it works, is there a way of asking or of demonstrating the effectiveness of SEO and really convincing them that it’s like one of the best ways to get traffic and get ultimately sales to your website?

Diana: Yes. So the ROI?

Joel: Yes.

Diana: Tracking ROI with SEO is pretty tricky especially, and it’s funny because we can track so much. But there’s a lot that we can’t track. A lot of times I would talk to businesses and say, and this was pre pandemic times too, obviously we can’t attribute someone finding you on Google and then coming into your store and buying something. I struggled with that a lot because some of them, a lot of my businesses, a lot of my clients didn’t sell products online. They were dealerships. They were our equipment dealerships. You don’t buy a bulldozer online. You go to the dealership and look. So we had a really tough time attributing ROI. So we would look at other metrics like brand and terms, the increase in people searching for your brand name. And then also the conversion rate online, but we would set different conversions. So are they signing up for your email now? Are they subscribing to your social media channels? Are they doing other actions? Are they clicking on the map page? I put a lot of weight on how much organic traffic or the path. Coming into the website and then leaving on like the map page or the contact us page, and I’m like, “See. This organic traffic is coming here. They’re checking you out.” And then here’s a really interesting page. Here’s a page of their website that shows their intent. Their intent is to visit you or contact you. And that’s very, very valuable. So I would track paths a lot and show like attribution of organic traffic to the priority pages, to the intent pages if it wasn’t a shopping website, for example, or an appointment website. Something where there is a direct correlation I would show that kind of effect. And then you have to track visitors. How many visitors are coming from the search engines organically. That is how many more eyeballs you are getting put by this work then you wouldn’t, if you hadn’t put the effort into it. Another great thing too, is showing where you start to show up in the SERP features. So things like the featured snippet, the map pack, the knowledge panel, getting the site links or your reviews showing up. Going beyond. Because we know rankings now are so biased based on our browser history. That is actually kind of difficult to track organic rankings unbiasedly. SEMrush tool does do that, thankfully. I think most tools actually do that. But you are the client and you’re searching and you’re Googling yourself, like you might see different results than the report that’s why. But you can start to track your presence in the SERP features too. So not only are we optimizing for your site to show up ten, nine, eight up to one, but now you’re showing up in featured snippets. Now your site links are here. Now your reviews. So there’s more to show now. 

34:47 Joel: Okay, could you, just for our audience, define some of those terms that you just used to like certain features and knowledge panels, right? What are those? 

Diana: Yes. For sure. So I’d love certain features. So SERP features are everything that shows up on Google except the ads and except the organic standard listings. So when you see the map, when you Google a question and that answer box pops up, if you Google a recipe and the steps show up, if you Google a person and their bio shows up on the right hand side, those are all considered SERP features. Because they go above and beyond the traditional organic blue link and blurb something like a featured snippet. Featured snippets: There’s a couple different kinds, there’s like four kinds. Those are typically at the very tippy top. When you’ve Googled a question, “What is the weather like in San Antonio?” And it answers it right at the top, or like your flight information, those flight results. Those are considered SERP features. But featured snippets often show you steps, “How do I install a toilet?” Whatever, you get those steps before you even have to click into the article. “How do I broil chicken?” The recipe is right there before you even click into the website. So those are featured snippets. It’s called featured snippets because it’s pulling a snippet of content from an article and displaying it straight on Google. So that’s why it’s called a snippet. It’s featured because it’s typically very high on the page. Sometimes above paid ads sometimes in the content, it just depends on how Google feels that day. One of my other favorite SERP features is that people also ask because of the prevalence of people asking Google questions, and in voice search too, it is really important to be answering questions in your content.

So if you’re researching, like you’re coming up with a new piece of content, maybe you’re creating an FAQ page for your website, the people also ask section is a great resource for those types of questions for you to be included in your content. Because those questions are not pulled arbitrarily. I don’t actually know the Google science behind it, but my theory is that because, you know how their AI is tracking everything we do, they have all of the data, so they’re seeing people who want to make homemade pizzas also ask, “Where do I buy gluten-free crust? Can I spread my own cheese? Or what’s the best marinara sauce?” They’re going to suggest these questions to you because they’ve seen pattern behaviors in their AI.

The knowledge panel is that bio that shows up on the right hand side, especially if you Google like a company or a person, that whole knowledge panel comes up; that’s what it’s called. I think it’s pretty well named, and some panel of knowledge. And it pulls from different sources. A lot of times it pulls from Wikipedia. But it’ll pull articles and your social media handles and things like that too. So it’s really great for personal branding. If you are an influencer or a celebrity or kind of an author or something like that, then it’s a really great way to get you front and center on Google when you get searched.

So those are a couple. Did that answer your question? Keep going.

Joel: It definitely does. Can you talk a little about, you were talking about maps earlier and the importance of those, for companies that serve a particular area, maybe like they have a shop or they’re an in-person service post, and maybe a company that sells t-shirts and can sell worldwide, should these companies look at SEO differently? 

Diana: Absolutely. Yes. That’s a great question. Yes. So now we’re getting into local SEO. So local SEO is very, very important and you could add it, but it’s also really great because you know what? There’s less people competing against you locally than there is in the world. So you already have an advantage and you already have less competition. And you want to think about local SEO as if you live in that community. So including colloquial terms for your region, including neighborhoods. People call San Antonio, San Anton. So optimizing for things like that. And where I am from in Virginia, there’s about seven cities that make up Hampton Roads, Virginia. Hampton roads is an arbitrary term, but, me, searching from one of those cities, I might look for HVAC services and Hampton roads, because I know they can be in any one of those seven cities, as opposed to Googling all of those seven cities.

So think about how people in your area talk about your area, because you need to include those terms in your content. Do not include every freaking zip code that you serve in your content. Do not include every freaking city in your five states’ service area. Do not do that. That’s excessive. That’s spammy. That is providing no one help.

If you serve that large of an area, invest in a website where people can select their location. Invest in that technology. Please, don’t add all of your zip codes to your contact us page. I will hunt you down. I hate it. I hated that because I’ve worked with multi location businesses, and, “Can I just put all my zip codes?” Well, A: Hardly anyone searches by zip code. But B: It’s going to look like a bunch of numbers. They’ll look like crap. So no. You can’t do that.

I think the biggest way to think about it, or the biggest difference in thinking about it is thinking about your colloquial terms and the way that people talk about your geography and the geography, and not just sticking to the standard city names and including neighborhoods too. Because there are some very prominent neighborhoods that you may want to focus on. So yes. 

Joel: Mmm. I’m going to ask you to get out your crystal ball for a little while, and what do you see? I’m going to ask, or answer this in any way you like, but I think I’ll make it very broad, and then you can answer specifically SEO or social media or however you want. But how do you see the future of digital digital marketing and the next couple of three or five years?

Diana: Ahh. Let me think. Well, I see, first of all, we’re going to be able to search with our brains. Eventually Google will be able to read our minds. So just start optimizing your brain. But I think we are evolving into a world where bland and standards aren’t going to cut it. Just having a website ain’t gonna cut it. I see the resurgence in creativity in a brand story. I know that digital marketing has to be holistic. Don’t just invest in SEO. You are going to need social media. You’re going to need YouTube. You’re going to need email. You’re going to need the whole gamut. Because we are all connected by our phones now. And there are 17 different ways that you can connect with someone and you’re going to need to test all of them. You don’t have to pursue all of them all of the time, because you’re just going to need to test them. So maybe my answer is that testing is going to be more prevalent in the future. Because testing creativity: How do you stop the scroll? You need to test how you connect with a human to human through website copy and through social media copy. And you need to test all of the different channels to hone in on not being everywhere. Because you also don’t want your customers to become blind to you because they just constantly freaking see you. But you can also become reliable. I know Domino’s is going to email me every single day at about four thirty. And sometimes I open that email because I want pizza.

So, you have to kind of come up with a rapport like that with your audience. So I would say more testing actually. 

Joel: Awesome. I’m going to ask you one last question, and this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. And it is going to be: Is there a book that you… do you have a favorite book or is there a book that you like to give a lot?

Diana: This is actually a really old book. But my two bosses ago gave it to me as I was going through managerial training and I loved it. It’s called: Good to Great. And it’s old. It talks about brands and businesses that do not exist anymore. But the point of the book is still very, very relevant. And the point of the book is: These brands were suffering. These businesses, not brands. These were businesses that were suffering; corporate level businesses suffering due to management, and how they were good. They were like the mediocre, but because they strategically shifted their leadership they went to great. And they shifted leadership in various different ways. There was no single solution. We brought in, we needed an alpha person. We needed this kind of person. They all had different types of personalities that they brought into their C-suite that we’re able to elevate the company, and elevate those that were below them too. Because a lot of the problems were the disconnect between the C-suite and those in the weeds. The book talks a lot about the transformation from floating, from plateauing or failing and suffering. And how a shift in upper management can, and management style and management strategy can really affect things from top to bottom. They did talk about employee satisfaction and employee health and retention employees. And how they were promoted from within a lot more after this and like training their existing talent. And they talked a lot about those types of tactics that good companies should be doing. It was just fascinating to hear how that shift can really just make something explode. something that might not be on the verge of bankruptcy or something. But just going from, “Eh” to “Holy. Wow.” Again, it’s old. You’re going to probably won’t even know half the businesses in there. I think they talk about Enron.

Joel: That’s depressing to think that book is old. I feel like it didn’t go that long ago.

Diana: Oh. I know.  But it talks about brands or businesses that have now actually merged. So, it is kind of funny looking back on it. But it’s a really great and interesting read from a corporate management standpoint, that I thought was really interesting. It has nothing to do with SEO. 

Joel: It doesn’t have to.

Diana: On that front too, I haven’t read an SEO or digital marketing book in quite some time. Just because they get so outdated so quickly. But I love staying up to date through our digital sources and blogs and newsletters, like search engine journals, and keeping up with those sources. Twitter has been a great resource for updated news especially follow, I mean, you can get to follow Google. You had to follow Microsoft. You get to follow them. And they announced their changes very quickly. So you get to follow along in real time. And I think that actually is a better way of staying up to date with what’s going on, than trying to read a book; a book printed in 2018 would be probably out dated at this point. 

Joel: Yes. I know, for sure. I love Twitter. I think it’s great.

Diana: You do too.

Joel: I know a lot of people. A lot of people knock it, but it’s actually my favorite social media platform, for sure. By far. On that note, Diana, thank you so much for being on the show.

I really appreciate you taking your time.

Diana: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad we got to connect and hangout.

Joel: You’re welcome. Anytime you want to come back, just shoot me an email.

Diana: I would love to. Let’s do it again.

Joel: Yes. Okay. For people who want to reach out to you, where is, I guess Twitter, maybe, is the best, but where’s a good place to reach out to you?

Diana: So you could follow a SEMrush on all our social media platforms. We’re easy. We are: SEMrush, that’s our handle across the board. That’s S E M R U S H. And I am mostly talking about SEO and wine on Twitter and LinkedIn. So you can search for my name on both platforms. But my actual handle on Twitter is: @DianaRich013, because 13 is my lucky number. And on LinkedIn, you’ll know it’s me because there’s a wineglass next to my name.

Joel: And for people who want to check out SEMrush, I guess, obviously, go to the website, how do you sign up? 

Diana: We have a seven day free trial, but we also have a free account option. We have paid options, but we have a totally free account option. If you go to sign up for that, you can just skip the payments and it’ll automatically put you into the free accounts. And you can use that as you… it certainly has restrictions, but it’s actually a much nicer way than if you can’t get it all in, in seven days; it’s actually like a nice way… you’ll get full access to pretty much everything in a seven day free trial or the free, but I feel that it’s easier to play around with the free account at first and then consider upgrading. Based on that you can see a lot of the workflows, but yes, you just go to semrush.com or click on any of our… we have tons of posts out there with easy calls to action to sign up for free for seven days.

So anyway, and if you have questions, my DM’s are open on Twitter. Please feel free to reach out. 

Joel: Thank you. I know that for sure because that’s how we connected. I honestly didn’t expect a response.

Diana: Yes. Through DM. I’m going to check my DM.

Joel: Yes. There you go. So you heard it here; being a blast. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.

Diana: You too.

Voice Over: Thank you for listening to Publishing for Profit. Please like and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.