#319: SEO Strategy for Boutiques

Hey, it's episode number 319. And this week we're talking to the marketing unicorn of marketing unicorns. It's our very own Jeff Fenn from the Boutique Hub team. You guys, if you've been a Boutique Hub member or if you've been through retail bootcamp, you've had an opportunity to meet Jeff talking all about paid traffic. He is an expert when it comes to Facebook ads, Google Ads, and serious when it comes to SEO. Today's episode, we're gonna deep dive into e commerce and SEO strategy and make it not so, so daunting. I know it feels like a foreign language sometimes, but we're decoding all of search engine optimization, what it means to you, how you can get into keywords, and how you can start to build your business organically before you start tossing dollars in the wind on Google and Facebook ads. So get ready to take tons of notes this week, I promise, with our very own Jeff Fenn, our marketing unicorn at the Boutique Hub. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy detail. What actually works from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week, week we are on audio. We're also on video on YouTube in case you're catching us there. I have a real treat today because it's one of our very own Boutique Hub members. I mean, I think we've tried to give Jeff a formal title a couple times, but I think those get rejected pretty fast. So right now, it's still officially the marketing unicorn at the Boutique Hub. That feels like a very Google ish kind of job title, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that actually I've been trying to get. They've tried to give me a few serious titles before, but I kind of turn them down as fast as I can.

People ask us questions like, oh, about marketing and funnels and Facebook ads. I always tell them, like, I have this guy. It's kind of like having someone in the mafia. Like, I just have this guy on the team and he's a marketing unicorn. So before we get into all the things, if you're listening, today we're going to deep dive into SEO, into traffic, into SEO ads, into Facebook ads into your Facebook ad agency. And if they're doing the right types of things for your business, we've got a lot to cover. But I also have to start here. Not only are you like our marketing unicorn, but you just ran an Ironman. Can you tell. Tell us about that? That's pretty freaking cool.

Yeah. So I've had this bucket list thing I wanted to do. I've been a marathon runner for quite a while. High altitude marathon runner, several times. And I always thought, well, what's next? You know, like, what's the, what's the next dumbest thing I can do? And so, yeah, and so I, I signed up for the Tulsa Ironman in 2019. It was supposed to happen in 2020, and then so it obviously got postponed and then so they had it here May 23rd in Tulsa, 2021. And so I had quite a while to get ready. Too long to get ready, as a matter of fact. And my wife and my parents, my in laws and a bunch of people went down and just rented an Airbnb and ran it. But if you don't know it's a 2.4 mile swim, which is long enough in the water to make you question what you're doing, and then 112 miles on the bike and so there in Tulsa. People don't think of Tulsa as very hilly, but believe it or not, there was 5,100 foot in elevation gain there in Tulsa. And so that's quite a bit on a bike during a day. And that 112 miles takes right around five and a half or six hours to complete. And then you run a full marathon at the end. And so I was lucky. I was able to finish, actually, which was kind of my goal. I actually had a, like a best day goal of under 12 hours, and I missed that by a little bit. But I had kind of, I had kind of an interesting experience. I. Three quarters of the way through the swim, I, I realized that I had forgot to pack my socks in my bike transition bag. And so like the whole last third of the swim, I was freaking out about not having socks. And so I just, I rode the bike without socks and by that time my feet were pretty, pretty, pretty ugly. And so the run was a little bit more difficult, so it slowed me down a little bit.

I can't imagine the anxiety. Like, I, it's bad enough when you, like, you know, forget a kid at school for 15 minutes and don't pick them up, but to forget socks and.

Have, I've done that.

Have the Entire bike ride and the marathon. How many people were in the race?

Uh, so there was. Right on. Just under 3,000 and. Yeah, just under. Just under 3,000. And there was, there was about 800 in my age group. So the 40 to 45 year old.

Age group, that's impressive. So 800. So you guys started at one time. Was it like a staggered start based on age groups then? That's a lot of people.

Well, they stagger started based on expected completion, time of the swim. And so if you swim under an hour, you start at one time. If you swim under an hour and 10 minutes, you start at one time under hour and 20 minutes and so on.

Did you have to do like a time trial or something like that to like, kind of know what that mark was going to be or you just. In your practice, you knew?

Yeah, you just know from practicing and it, like, it, it's advantageous to stick to your group that way that you're not getting clobbered by faster swimmers behind you. So if you, if you, you know, if you get in a faster group, obviously you're gonna get run over by, you know, a couple hundred faster swimmers. And so it. People stick to their group.

I still think jumping in the water with 800 people at one time, that's insane.

Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, it was interesting for sure. My goggles got kicked off my face twice. And so, yeah, it was interesting.

Wow. Well, so cool. Congratulations. It was really cool to watch that all unfold. That's a huge accomplishment. All right.

Yeah, thanks.

Let's talk about marketing, your other passion. You've been like, in this game, you've had some pretty cool marketing gigs before you randomly found the boutique hub. People always ask like, how'd you find Jeff a random? God, I don't know.

Yeah.

So happy for sure.

I feel the same.

Yeah. But so happy that it worked out.

Like. Yeah. So I, you know, I've been part of some great big projects, marketing manager for some, you know, big names. I kind of cut my teeth in the network marketing industry and doing a bunch of marketing for them and, you know, planning events and online ads and huge, huge, great big face Facebook and Google Ad spend budgets, you know, $250,000, $350,000 a month. And so, you know, kind of, kind of had a big pool of money to learn from. And I learned a lot fast doing that. And so that was, that was kind of an interesting. That was kind of an interesting experience to start off.

Glad you got to use just to.

Have a company say oh, yeah.

Glad you get to use someone else's money and not the boutique of's money to cut your teeth on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, as far as boutiques go, I mean, from what I see, there's plenty of boutiques out there willing to spend money on ads. Just, you know, it's just. It's just one of those things that you have to keep your eye on it every single day. It's not something you can just trust. You can just trust to make sure it's taken care of.

Well, let's start here. I want to get into the whole ad conversation, but let's start like with organic marketing first, because I feel like at the hub, and this is a huge reason why we have retail bootcamp is because I was getting messages every single day about Facebook ads and what do I need to do to run Facebook ads. And just all these questions about wanting to spend the money. But what I found was most people, they didn't have the right foundation, they didn't have enough organic traffic. They didn't know who their customer was. Their photography probably wasn't great, their buying wasn't great, their financial management wasn't great. So all those things have to be in place first before you're going to go. I mean, you might as well go to Vegas at that point and just light some money on fire. Because that's what can happen with ads if you haven't set the proper foundation. So we kind of get into all of that in Bootcamp, but you have a big part of that in talking about SEO and traffic. So if someone's listening and they're like, okay, I just have to make sure, like, SEO feels like a German word to me. I need to make sure I start somewhere to show up on Google. Where's like, the very baby basic beginner place to start with SEO.

Yeah. So first of all, SEO stands for search engine optimization.

Thank you.

That's the first step. And so basically all that means is if somebody's in your town or on the Internet looking for a boutique, you show up, right? So say somebody's in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and they're looking for a boutique, and they type in boutique near me, your boutique shows up. That's search engine optimization. It's optimizing your website for the search engines. And obviously everybody knows it's Google. Google's where it's at. And so Google relies on really two different, kind of two different areas that to really get you up there. Now Google has its own browser, Google Chrome, so most of the stuff is optimized through Google Chrome, but Google also has Google Maps. And Google Maps is a huge function of Google search. And so whenever you search something, you may notice that there's a couple ads that show up, paid placements that show up, and you can buy those spots. And then right below that, the very next section that shows up is Google Maps. And so the very first place you want to start to get organic traffic to your site is Google Maps.

All right.

And that's all arranged your Google My business account. And a lot of people don't know this, but Google rewards Google My business accounts kind of like Facebook does. And so when you have engagement and you're in, you're constantly making updates, and you're. You're uploading reviews on a frequent basis, and your operation hours are updated and you list your sales in Google My business and all that stuff, that frequency of update Google will reward you by increasing the rank of your Google Map listing. And so most people that I see don't treat their Google My business listing the same way they do Facebook because they don't understand that Google's actually rewarding them in the same way that Facebook does.

So go back to the basics of what is Google My business. Remember back in the day, they had Google that was like their dip in the water?

Yeah.

Is this like a spin off of that?

Yeah. So Google My business is basically your business listing on Google. So you have to verify that listing. You have to go in there, you have to put in all your details. They will mail you a postcard with a special code on it. You go back into your listing, put that code in, and that's how they verify you're a real business. And that's Google My business. It's a Google merged Google and Google My Business quite a while back. And that all those functions from Google are still in Google My business. Actually, all the posts and all, all that stuff is still in there, but it's not called Google anymore.

Gotcha.

But yeah. So Google My business is important. Um, there, year after year, you see, you see statistics all the time that say 80% of sales start on Google.

Wow.

Think about that. They don't say Facebook.

Yeah, I totally believe it. And it's overlooked 80%.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's definitely overlooked. And I would just encourage everybody listening to. If you're not collecting Google reviews, if you're not giving out your Google review link, if you've never heard of what a Google review link is, that could be the case. Figure it out. Get your Google review link and ask your best customers to leave your review because you can. You can dominate your local market. If you're a brick and mortar store, Google Maps and Google Reviews are important to you. Trust me.

So is there anything you need to do on the back end of your e commerce site to merge? Like. Like, is there any added benefit to show up better on Google Maps? Like, if you have your Google Map linked on your site? Or how does that correl.

Yeah. Okay, so in your Google My business account, there's an embed code. It's one line of code. It's a Google Map embed code that you should definitely put on your Shopify page or your square page or whatever e commerce platform you use. Make sure that you get that Google Maps embed code and include that either on your contact us tab or on the bottom of each page. On the bottom of each page kind of becomes a little busy, but make sure that somewhere on your page is that that embed code for your Google Maps because that, that definitely helps your Google Maps rank for sure. And then there's this other thing. One other thing that's always overlooked is people will list out their address slightly differently on their Shopify page than they do on their Google My business account. So, like, it'll say Ashley's Boutique Comma, La Crosse, Wisconsin, but on their Shopify page. Or what? However you do it. But then on their Google My business page, it'll just say Ashley's Boutique lacrosse, Wisconsin, without the comma. Oh, well, Google automatically sees that comma, just one comma, automatically sees that comma and discounts your authority immediately because they think that they're not the same business. You have to be very, very careful that your address, the name, the phone number is not only the same, but laid out the same, punctuated, the same, spaced, the same, capitalized, the same, all of that.

How often should you, like if someone is inspired today by listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go do this. Should you, like monthly or maybe quarterly, go back and review your listing there? Or like, what's the frequency that's most important?

So probably monthly. I mean, unless you're pushing Google to index your page, it's gonna take a while for them to see the updates. But Google Developer Tools, Google has a whole suite of tools. They're all called Google Developer Tools. You can always check those to check page load speed, Google Map rank, organic rank, keyword rank, all of that stuff. And they're all free and so you can always use Google Developer Tools. Like, if you just Google Google Developer Tools, load speed, the tool will pop up. Or if you Google Google Developer Tools, keyword generation or keyword count, the tool will pop up. And so that's usually how I find them.

Got it? So what about tools like Moz or like Moz Local, like, where you can add your store's information and then it'll show up on, like, here's how you appear on Google and Bing and Firefox and ask Jeeves if that were still in business today, is it worthwhile to do that as well?

Those are considered directory pages, and directory pages are still one of the most powerful backlinks you can get. So submit your page to every directory page you can find. They're called backlinks. Right. So Google, one of Google's key metrics is backlinks. So Google makes the assumption, and they just say, if all these directories trust you, we'll trust you. And so you submit it to the other search engines, you submit it to all the directory pages, you submit it to Yelp, you submit. You put your homepage on Facebook, you put your homepage on style. You do all of that stuff. You get all of those backlinks bundled up. And then Google says, well, if all these people trust you, we'll trust you more. And so that's how that works.

Talk to me more about backlinks, because I think there is such a missed opportunity. And this is not just brick and mortar stores, but online stores especially, I think have to be really smart about backlinks. And I know on shopthebestboutiques.com that's like, that usually ranks like number two or number three for people when they Google their own business name. It's a super powerful backlink or local pr. A lot of times when it comes to holiday marketing or the Boutique Awards, we push PR for people. Where else can we go to find backlinks for stores?

Well, first, I mean, first of all, you want to. You want to start with style, obviously. Like, it's this resource that we have as part of the. Part of the membership that, like, that is like either number one or number two backlink. Like, that gets you more authority for a backlink than people realize. So make sure your site's on there, please. Especially if, I mean, if you're a member and your site's not on there. Come on, get it together.

So let me just pause for a second. So log into your Boutique Hub account, fill out your profile that shows up on shopthebestboutiques.com and that's how you will show up.

Right? Right. Yeah, yeah. And so, and then, so directory pages, pages are always great. And then, you know, media outlets are like a close second. Okay? So anytime you have the opportunity to make a contact with your local media, even if you're just tagging your local media in your Facebook sale post, say you're, say you have a 10% off sale on whatever on jewelry, right? And so say you have a 10% off sale on jewelry and you create a Facebook post. Don't be shy to tag your local media in your Facebook post. Especially if you're a brick and mortar, don't be shy to do that because a lot of times they will share that. And then not only will you get a backlink from your Facebook page, but you'll get a backlink from their Facebook page. That counts as two, by the way. And so you can really compound with media. Don't be shy to submit, you know, submit press releases and things like that to local media. And then the next, the next, the next layer down of backlinks is kind of, you know, what they, what they call sponsored backlinks. So you apply, you say, hey, I have this business. Will you include my link to my page on your page? And you know, I'll mention your page of some sort. So, and those don't get very much. Those don't give nearly as much power. Actually, there are two others that should probably be mentioned, and that's Edu websites and dot gov websites. If you ever have the opportunity to be listed in your local commerce page and it has a.gov URL, that's the most powerful backlink you can get.

Really? I had no idea.

Bar none. Bar none.gov is the most powerful. And then Edu, if you ever have the chance to sponsor a school event or you know, give, give something to the local PTA and they'll, and they'll mention you on their website and they have a Edu, just remember that's worth its weight in gold because, because that Edu backlink is powerful. And so you'll get, you'll get more and more Google authority based on you having a Eduardo backlink. So if you ever have the chance to cater to the moms that are part of the pta, do it.

That's really helpful to know. And there's no shame in asking that. Like, yes, I'd love to sponsor this. And I just simply ask that you link my website on your website. Man, that's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And all they have most of those, you know, most of those sort of events are kind of like a fundraisers and things like that and they'll list out the people that contributed. And so you, when you, obviously when you submit your details, your URL, you know your website needs to be on, otherwise it doesn't work.

Exactly. Hey guys, you've heard me talk about Management One and you know they're the leading provider of merchandise intelligence, planning, business insights and education for thousands of retailers around the world. For nearly 35 years, M1 has leveraged its ability to collect, process and analyze retail data to build reliable growth and profitability plans for its customers. And as the number one provider of merchandise intelligence for retailers. And they combine not only industry leading data platform, but also proven retail consulting to help put you in control of your inventory and your business. If Covid's taught us anything, you guys in retail, it's that adaptation is everything and smart inventory planning is key. We can never change those fundamentals of retail success. So by combining Management One with the boutique hub, retailers have grown their business to new heights with increased cash flow and reduced inventory burdens overbuying under buying and all the struggles that come with managing this key aspect of the retail science in your business. Guys, reach out to Management One for more information on how to manage your inventory, your cash and project your profitability. So backlinks are huge. Let's talk about keywords. I think that feels very daunting for people that don't understand it from the basics break down, what does having keywords mean and how do we go about really honing in what ours are going to be?

Okay, so keywords are simple. And this is, this is really important for, this is really important for online boutiques especially. And so you have to think, what do people type into Google when they're trying to find a store like mine? Like, what do they look for? I use the same example over and over and again, but it's like a leopard pants, right? So like just because I'm too dense to think of anything else, I think. But so anyway, so the, so the, so anyway, so Jeff's leopard pants. You know, if somebody is, if somebody is searching for leopard pants, like how do they search for it? Like, do they search for it with a brand name? Do they search for it by size? Do they search for it by the length? Do they search for it by the material? Like you have to think about all those things. And so like if they want Levi leopard pants, I don't know if Levi makes leopard pants. They probably. So the. So if they want Levi leopard pants, that's how they search for it. Or if they want. If they want, you know, spandex leopard pants, which sounds exciting, but so like, if they want those things, if they want those things, you know, you have to think, like, what will somebody search to find products like mine? Like, what will they type into Google? And there's tools that tell you that. And this brings up a quick point I just want to make. I know one of our topics is not Google Ads, but if you run a small little Google local search ad for your boutique, Google Ads does one spectacular thing, and it tracks every single keyword that somebody types in that lands on your page. So every single time somebody Google something and they end up on your page, Google Ads tracks that. And so it's this unbelievably valuable database of search terms that you need to take out of there and dump into your keywords. Now, in your keywords, basically, you know, that's in the. That's in the product descriptions, the store description, and the meta descriptions on your site. Meta descriptions are the. Are the page description that people don't see.

Yeah. So I want to mention something really quick on that, because I don't think people also realize that meta goes into your photos as well. So there's this really handy Shopify app, SEO, image optimizer, and it just simply takes all of your product descriptions and dumps them into the alt text on the back end of your photos. That's such a simple little thing. It's free, but hugely powerful because your images are going to show up on Google Images as well.

Yeah, Google Images is, you know, that's another whole powerful, underutilized area of Google. And so. Yeah, yeah.

So one of the things we do in retail Bootcamp that I just kind of want to highlight for a second is we do a lot of customer surveys and then we build customer Personas and then we look at all of those keywords and then we talk about, let's build them into our site. So you mentioned your about page, your product descriptions, all of your metadata, which is in your online preferences. And if you're in Shopify, but even I think something that is overlooked is your homepage copy, your headers, and then even just like your product pages, if you can add like one little paragraph of copy on product pages or on your FAQ pages, like the more you can insert copy everywhere on your site that includes those search terms, I'll just say online trendy boutique, because good Luck ranking with that. Right. Because everyone's bought that up. All the big dogs own that one. But if you go to the Pink Lilies website, I'll pick on Tori for a second or I'll pick on Laura Benson for a second with Philly flair. It's everywhere. Just click through their website and you'll see all their keywords on every single page on their website. It's just building consistency and where they're going to show those words.

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk about how Google ranks text real quick. And so like, I don't like H1, right. So H1 text, type of text. It means the top title of a page, the biggest title of the page, the head title of the page. That's what Google reads first. Okay. So if you have the opportunity to stick a keyword in your H1 in the title. Do it. Yeah, do it for sure. And then they look at H2. Right. So, so that's the, the subheader, the, the headline just below the main headline. It's a little bit more descriptive. You know, it's a little bit more descriptive. It's a smaller font and it, you know, it gives you a chance to put a few more words in there. And then last year in 2020, Google announced that they prefer bullets and lists over, over paragraph text. And so if you have the opportunity to list out the features of a product, the attributes of a product in bullet fashion, that's the way you want to do it. And Google, Google calls, calls it a featured snippet now. And so lists, lists in numbered fashion or bullet fashion are called featured snippets. And you've probably already seen it. As a matter of fact, it's really popular right now in product descriptions and how tos. But it'll pop up with a little list, a little special box right there. And that box is considered a featured snippet. And that's, you know, that's kind of, you know, that's, that's what you want to go after because that gives you a, that gets you a first place Google rank for that product. So I'm, so that's, that's how, that's kind of how Google ranks text.

I'm thinking about how that translates to a clothing store. So I feel like people don't necessarily read blog posts like they used to. So I always get asked like, is it still worth it to build blog posts? I think it's for the SEO value more than people actually reading it. So if you had a TikTok on how to wear Spandex leather or, I'm sorry, Spandex leopard pants. If you had a TikTok.

Yeah, it's really popular.

Of course it is. And then you could embed that into a blog post and then make bullet points on how you would style it. That's what's going to pull for a snippet, and it's powerful for SEO. Good to know.

That's right. Yeah. So just remember, like, Google is still text based. Like Google's preference is text. And so blogs are the number one way to get text in front of Google. So there's no doubt about it.

How can I. If I'm gonna just. I'm gonna start this SEO strategy. How. This is a loaded question, but how long should this take me? Like, what's my realistic expectation of how long until I should start to see results? And then how do I track results? If I am, like, making it a goal to improve SEO, how do I measure my success?

Yeah. So first of all, time depends on whether you manually have Google index your new updates or whether you wait for Google to crawl your page. I would encourage everyone to watch a YouTube video on how to make Google index your page. Mainly, yeah, do not wait for Google. They could be around sometime in 2026. You never know. But they could crawl your page tomorrow. But the thing is, you have the opportunity to use Google developer tools to have Google manually index your page when you request it. That's the most powerful lesson there to speed up time. Time is directly influenced by when they index your page. The. The metric that you're watching for is organic traffic. And so if you don't have a Google Analytics global tag loaded on your page right now, you have. You need to do that. It's more important than a Facebook Pixel, by the way. But a Google Global tag loaded on your page, it's super simple. In Shopify, they have a space for it. Like it. You just. You just. And the code starts with ua.

Something, something online store preferences. And it's the same place you load your Facebook Pixel is where you load that Google tag. Copy and paste.

Yeah. So once you load that, you can go to your Google Analytics page and it will tell you this. Many people came to your page from organic traffic. And what that means is somebody searched for Spandex leopard pants, your blog post popped up and they clicked on it. And so that's. That's the metric you're watching is unique organic traffic.

I think a lot of boutiques feel like, well, I can just get my traffic in the back end of Shopify. But I argue you have so much more data in the back end of Google Analytics, and that's really your. Your metric. How much traffic? Where did they come from? Where was my acquisition from? What's time spent on page? What was my bounce rate? All those things. Things to look at in Google Analytics.

Yeah. So dwell time, how much time somebody spends on your page if they come to your page and immediately leave if they're there for 14 seconds? That's something you want to know. Because guess what? It means the page you're sending everybody to is the wrong page. It means the link on your blog post is wrong. It could mean that your page is terrible, by the way. It could mean that your page is broken. But you know that dwell time is an important thing. I mean, you want it to be a couple minutes.

Yeah.

Right. You want it. You want somebody to come, be captured, be excited, want to explore and spend a couple minutes.

Jeff, there's probably a couple heads exploding listening to this because they're like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I have a lot to do. So if that's you that is listening or watching, I just want to reassure you that we have some library videos on this in the training library at the Hub. And Jeff, I know it's on our to do list to get several more made from you to put in the training library. So there are resources. I know we have some basic Google Analytics how to videos, how to install that code. Like, all that stuff's in the training library. And Jeff's in retail bootcamp quite often. I mean, you're in there answering questions and sharing these resources, and you have several modules in there as well. So just be reassured that this information is elsewhere to help walk you through step by step, step. I want to kind of transition and ask you this question because this also relates to Facebook ads. But I see there's like this wild west of traffic agencies today. And don't get me wrong, there's some good ones, but there are some snake oil salesmen that I'm just going to caution you just to watch out for. And I see it again both in Facebook ads and SEO. And they'll come to you and they're like, you know, I'm going to charge you five grand a month just to do your SEO. And then you're like, but what are you really doing for five grand a month? That's a lot. I could just bring this in house and watch some YouTube videos and I could figure it out. What Should I be looking for if I'm gonna go after an agency or what questions should I be asking if an agency is approaching me wanting to offer these services?

Yeah. So let's start with, let's start with an SEO agency. These are, these are kind of like, these are kind of like. Let me, let me tell you, Let me tell you how if I was going to rip somebody off, how I'd do it. And so if you were going to do it right, what you would do is you'd go to a boutique and you'd say, listen, I can get you a first place rank guaranteed on Google. I'll get you a first place rank guaranteed on Google. And I wouldn't tell you for which keyword. I wouldn't tell you if those people were in your city or out of your city. And then I would, I would send you a report at the end of the month that says, oh, yeah, look, when it, whenever anybody Googles Ashley's Boutique in La Crosse, Wisconsin, you come up first. You owe me my thousand bucks.

Yeah.

Guess what? That's worth almost nothing. Those people are already your customers. They're already your customers. What you want, what you want an SEO agency to show you is page rank increase over a variety of keywords, right? So you want them to pump out a list and say, look, Ashley, look, here are our top 183 keywords. Our rank on average has increased 27% this month on all 180 of these keywords. And we have first, first page ranks on. We had seven last month, and we've got 414 this month. And you want to see that first page rank continue to grow, but you also want that, that, that improvement on a variety of keywords to grow. And they need some specialized tools to do that. And you can't generate reports like that on a typewriter, which I've seen. And so, like, literally, like we've seen it. I'm serious. I'm not joking. So, like, tools like a hrefs, like, you can load all the keywords for a page that you're managing and it will show you, okay, here's all your keywords. Here's the overall rank increase for those keywords. This is how you're doing, kind of give you an overall score. And so that's what you want. You want continuous rank increase over a variety of keywords for an SEO agency. And if they can do that, they're worth their money. But let me just stress that SEO does not take magic. It doesn't take much. All it takes is effort. And so all you have to do is pay attention to what words you're putting on your page. Ask Google to index your page, update your listings, update your product descriptions, and your SEO will increase.

I love it. And then your sales should, your traffic should increase, your sales should increase. Like there always has to be that.

Yes, organic traffic will increase with SEO. Now, your page itself is what determines sales. And so SEO will increase the people on your page. And then you need to optimize your page to encourage people to buy, buy now. And, or, or encourage them to come back and buy. Yeah, and so that's, that's kind of a different process.

Yeah. And you know, honestly, what you just said wraps back to what I said at the very beginning of the conversation of people wanting to then put paid traffic on it. Google Ads, Facebook ads, whatever. But if your site is not good, right, you can, you can bring in all the traffic, you can round all the traffic up. But if your page isn't good, if your photos aren't good, if your products aren't good, then they still aren't going to buy at the end of the day. So that has to be number one priority, right?

Yeah. And I've been through this myself. I've created hundreds of sales pages. I mean, maybe more, I don't know, but thought this is a kick ass sales page. You know, like this is perfect and put a bunch of paid traffic behind it and the conversion rate comes back at like 0.03% and you're like, oh my gosh. I mean, you can miss, right? Everyone can miss. And so don't think just because you put your heart and soul into your product page means that it's a converting page because it may not be. And so be prepared to tear down your pride and joy and amen if it doesn't convert. Yeah, right. And so, amen. Keep that in mind. So I've got, I've got a lady I, I work with a lot and I'll send her a proof of a page and you know, she typically responds, oh, this, this is, this is excellent. And then follows that with 700.

I have no idea who you're talking about.

I'm not, I'm not gonna name names, but she may be on this podcast.

I don't know what that means. I'd never edit anything and I can't guarantee my edits are any good. Sometimes I get to the end of things and we still burn them down. Oh, Lord.

Yeah, that would be. My advice is even though you put your pride and joy into a product page or a homepage. If you start producing traffic and it's not converting question your page because it's probably the point.

Similar to this conversation, I want to wrap actually to Pinterest because I think people look at Pinterest, I know this is like not the topic of today, but I just. While we're talking about keywords, I want to mention this. Pinterest is not a social media platform, it's a search platform. So whatever strategy you're employing on your site and on Google, you have to mirror it on Pinterest because the same engine, the same search engine is true on Pinterest as on Google. All critically important. Do you have anything to thoughts about Pinterest?

Yeah. So Pinterest is all about an image description. It's all about the image description that hides behind the image. Right? It's not about the image. Like, I know, like boutique owners are unbelievably good at taking beautiful images, which is awesome. Like they stop the scroll, right? But Pinterest is about the description that hides behind the image. And so that, that same, that same strategy that you were taken to find your keywords, like what would somebody Google to find this product? That's the same description that needs to be loaded to Pinterest is that same sort of mentality, like it's all about the text behind the image, not the image itself.

Yeah. Helpful to know. Well, Jeff, I know today we wanted to also talk about Facebook ads, but I don't know that we're going to have time. That's a whole another can of worms we're probably going to open. So as we wrap up our time together, I want to keep talking about this agency thing for just a hot second as it relates to Facebook ads because they're so closely mirrored. Similar to someone doing, you know, an SEO agency. Let's talk about Facebook ad agencies for just a second because I think we see a lot of those same complaints that maybe this agency doesn't have my best interest in mind. What are some things we should be looking out for when it comes to Facebook ad agencies?

Okay, so first and foremost, what is your return on investment? Right? What is your, they call it roas. Right. Return on ad spend. And what is, what is the return? Like, what is the return? Now, there's a couple exceptions to the rule, right? So a branding campaign, you're a brand new boutique, you need to build an audience, you need an email list, you need people on your site for the very first time. Okay? So that's that's okay. So you're not worried about the return there, right? So you're trying to get people on your page to get them to pixelate or to get their pixelate, that meaning on your Facebook pixel, but to get their info, you know, get their email address, that sort of thing. That's a branding campaign. You're not worried about returning there. But all other campaigns, Facebook, any other paid campaign, you want to know your return. You want to know your roas, your return on ad spend. So every. You should be asking yourself, I spent $1. I spent $1 on Facebook. How many did I make? Did I make three? Did I make three back? That's the goal, right? Every dollar you spend, you want to make three. But that's the goal. That's great. And every once in a while, like, you'll get. Facebook's real weird right now. It's real crazy. Roas is all over the place. Cost per click is great one day and terrible the next. And to be honest with you, it's driving me a little crazy. But the. But your return, you should still be able to maintain a 3 to 1 return. And so if you hire an agency and you get your first report, say you hire them for a month and they charge you this silly setup fee. And just. Just to let you know, like, Facebook ad campaigns do not take a lot of time to set up once you get good at it. Like, this isn't like a. You're not building Elon Musk rocket to go to Mars, right? Okay, you're setting up a Facebook ad campaign just takes a little bit. And so if they have an outlandish setup fee, that's a big red flag right off the bat because this is not a complicated process. And so, but anyway, so if you get your first report at the end of the month, right? So if you get your first report at the end of the month, it does not have roas on there R O A s and all their reporting is clicks. You better. You, you, you better. You better hit the brakes for a second.

Yeah.

And please just take that advice, because a good ad agency will be dying to report to you on roas. They'll be wanting to tell you, you guys aren't gonna believe it. We hit 3 to 1 on our first month. Or you know what? We broke even this month. But this is our first month. Let's see if we can get. Let's see if we can get a 1.5 return on ad spend next month. And they'll work their way up. But if they come to you and they say, hey, actually, this was a killer month. I got you 17,000 clicks. Or even worse yet, I got you 131,000 impressions, and all you spent was $2,000 on ads and $1,000. To me, that's bad news, ladies and gentlemen. That's bad. That's not what you want. And so clicks and impressions are great. Cost per click is a good metric to keep your eye on. It shows how efficient your campaign is. But that is not what you're. That is not what you're buying. I mean, that is not. That is not what. That is not what you're buying. I mean, it's just, you're buying return on investment. You don't advertise unless it generates a return. And so, Roiz, that's my biggest. That's my biggest pet peeve that I see pretty much every day now is, oh, yeah, you know, here's my ad agency's report. Does this look good and Roas is not on there? Yeah, clicks and impressions is. Because it's beautiful. 181,000 impressions. Well, great. That means, you know, 179,990 scrolled past your ad. You realize that, I mean, like, that's what that means.

Yes, Amen to that.

And so, yeah, that's the biggest thing to watch out for is does your report include Roas, and if so, what's it at?

Yeah, let's break this down one step further, because when an agency takes on and they're gonna run ads for you, they're gonna run several ads. It's not like you're just gonna run one ad or one ad type, right? And roas you're gonna get typically running conversion ads. That's the point. At the end of the day, you want to make money, you gotta have a return. But sometimes there's top of funnel ads. So breakdown. There's generally about three, right. Types of ads we should be running in the funnel. What are those?

Yeah, so I think like, this, this whole top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel came from the clickfunnels guys, which I was one of for a while, so I won't criticize. So anyway, like, so top of funnel, right? So that's if you just think about it as a funnel. So you're starting your funnel off with people who have no idea who you are. They don't know your boutique exists, they're within your demographic, they buy the type of clothes that you like. But really there's no way to even know that. And so they don't know who you are. So top of funnel is you're just getting the word out about your boutique to the people who may or may not buy from you. That's top of funnel. It's cold traffic. It's people who don't know who you are. And this is kind of like what I was talking about earlier, a branding campaign. You wouldn't necessarily expect to measure return on that campaign. Middle of funnel is for people who have visited your page, people who have engaged with your Facebook page, people who have liked posts on your Facebook page, people who have watched a bunch of the videos you post or watched a bunch of the live sales that you've done, that sort of thing. That's middle of funnel. People who have interacted with you in some way. That's middle of the funnel. And so those people you would expect a return on, you say, okay, I know that Sally has been to my page. I know that she was on there for a while and I would like to send an ad to her because I think I can encourage her to buy. And those are the people that you expect a 3 to 1 or more return on. And then you have bottom of funnel, right? And so bottom of funnel is for your hottest market, right? So you've got, you know, you've got those women that come into your boutique every Friday immediately after payday and spend 400 bucks. That person is bottom of funnel. You want to send an ad to that person and say, hey Ashley, I know you're gonna love these jeans. Leopard tits, I got six pair left. You better get in here. And like, boom, you got them. And those, those you can get like a 10 to 1 return on because you already know they're buyers. You already know that they're buyers. And Facebook actually does have a new filter that is a proven online buyer filter that you can turn on only on the bottom of funnel. Don't turn on middle funnel or top of funnel, but only on the proven buyers. You can flip that on and then send it to the people who have already bought from you. And it'll really increase your conversion rates.

Perfect. So we can measure traffic, we can measure clicks, we can measure roas number one new customers. We should be able to measure at the end of the day, are we making money? Are our sales increasing greater than whatever it is we are spending in fees and these silly setup fees and all of that. And our agency has to communicate. How often should they communicate?

Every week?

Every week?

Every week, Every week.

With a report that's not written, a typewriter that day.

There should either be a report sent or you should jump on with them. Or just jump on with them for five minutes and make them, make them go over their report with you. Just, I mean, if they're charging you 2, 3, 4, 5, $6,000 a month, you deserve, you absolutely deserve a weekly Zoom meeting. For real. I mean, for real. I mean, they need to hop on Zoom with you and say, hey, look, this is what's going on. This is where we won. This is where we lost this. This is shaky. This is what I need as far as content. I need a new video for this. You know, I'm going to turn this ad campaign off until we get that. And that should be a weekly thing. And Facebook ads and Google Ads are not set and forget. They are not. They're high maintenance, they're fickle, they're whiny, they're needy. I mean, they are not set and forget.

And last thing we have to mention before I forget about it is make sure it's on your pixel. Make sure your ads are being run on your pixel, not the agency's pixel, because we've seen people do that. And then you fire the agency and all your data's gone. You have no idea what's been going on or if they're even running ads, which. The cool feature I love about Facebook now is you can go to page info. So you. If, if you just go to someone's Facebook page, this is how you can spy on and see every ad someone else is running. You go to their page info and what is it called? Like page transparency. Is that what it is? And you can see ads being run by this page. So go to. If you have an agency, go to your own Facebook page, look at page transparency and you can see all the ads that are being run for your page right now or whatever other site you want to go check on. You know, you're being served ads that you actually like from. From someone. Go see all their ads, get some ideas. Nothing wrong with that.

That's actually another video we need to probably film for the. The training library is, you know, how to actually get into your ad manager and make sure ads are running. Because a lot of people don't know how.

Yes, all the things. Teach Amanda Fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. Jeff. I feel like if someone was listening today, they probably have a page full of notes. I hope they have a page. Page full of notes and feel like they learned a ton. If I'm not going to give out your personal email address or phone number on this podcast because I know you'll get bombarded. But if you need to ask Jeff a question, you're inside of all of our groups at the Boutique Hub Again, videos in the training library, coaching and retail boot camp. You're at our events. You're speaking at the Boutique Summit. Marketing Unicorn Jeff Ben, thanks so much for being on the show today.

There we go. Alright, thanks. See you guys later.

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