In this instructional YouTube video, Dotty Scott (Speaker A) delivers a practical, non‑technical guide to basic search engine optimization (SEO) for business owners. She distinguishes the highly technical side of SEO—best left to professionals—from simple, actionable strategies that anyone can implement. The core advice centers on making a website the central hub and ensuring every online profile, review, video, social post, and backlink points back to it. She explains how third‑party reviews on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube generate independent search listings and are weighted more heavily than on‑site reviews. The importance of a Google Business Profile (GBP) is highlighted as a separate index that can keep a business visible in Maps even if the website ranking drops. Video content should be hosted on YouTube, not a self‑hosted media library, because YouTube videos appear independently in search results. Public social media activity (LinkedIn, Facebook) also feeds search engines, making an active social presence essential. Backlinks are defined as any external site linking to yours; they should be distributed across various pages, not just the homepage, and can be generated through blogging, guest posts, forums, and chamber memberships. Blogging is presented as a long‑term keyword strategy: by analyzing search terms (e.g., “website builder”) and creating targeted posts, a business can accumulate thousands of keywords that persist over time. The speaker concludes by urging owners to link every online asset back to their website and promises a deeper dive into backlinks in the next episode.
Chapters
Welcome to day 3 of your itty-bitty amazing visibility book, 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy. And today we're going to go over basic search engine optimization. So business owners think, search engine optimization, often known as SEO, is complicated and expensive, and it can be, but there are two sides of SEO: the highly technical side, and that should probably be left to professionals, and there's the simple strategies any internet will help your SEO if your website is the central hub. So if you have a profile out on the internet and it's not linked to your website, whatever's on that profile is not going to help you. Um, reviews count for SEO, and we'll cover more of this in Chapter 6, but a review is so important for your search engine optimization. And this could be a Google review, it could be a review in Facebook, a recommendation on LinkedIn. All of these types of things, they get their own individual listings in a search result. So if you've got reviews all over the internet, then if someone types in your business name or your name and the word reviews after it, they will show up individually. So won't be just your website. I mean, it's possible to have the first 5, 6, 7 instances on the home page of all stuff for you. And if you have YouTube reviews, so like little video reviews on your YouTube channel, those show up independently as well. So make it easy if someone is looking for a review for you to find you by having more than just your website. So a review on your website is great, but everybody knows that that could be fake, it could be made up. And you know what? Google knows that too. And so, you know, they're not so inclined to care about reviews that are on your website as they are to care for reviews on their platform or on any other platform that you have to sign into. In order to get that review. Your Google Business Profile can greatly boost your website rankings, and we will cover this more in Chapter 5, so 2 days from now. Um, but your Google Business Profile is the, a completely separate index from your website. So if we think about this, Google has set up, um, their organic ranking is what everybody thinks of as the first through 10 spots on the first page of the listings, and that's all website driven. So if you do something on your website, which I have done this, that Google doesn't like, then your website, which may have been on page 1, is now on, I don't know, page 10. That was my experience. However, because the Google Business Profiles or the Maps section uses a completely separate database and index for Google, uh, people still kept calling me. Because I was still showing up in the first place in Google Maps, and that is directly because of how I do my Google Business Profile. So it is super important, um, especially for local businesses, but really for all businesses. It's really important to have that. Videos can boost your SEO, and we'll cover this on Chapter 11. But a video, whether it's on your website, which a lot of people want to like upload it to their media library on their website and show it directly from there. Don't do that. Put it on YouTube. Create a YouTube channel, put your video on YouTube. Google owns YouTube. So it's important. I mean, they think it's important. They purchased the platform, uh, they— the YouTube videos show up independently in search results if there's a video on there. I mean, think about the last time you did a search. I'm sure a video for something related to whatever you searched for was shown there. If you want that visibility for your business, get a YouTube channel and start uploading videos. Social media affects your SEO. I am, I don't know if you've noticed this, but, um, some of the AI overviews are actually being pulled from LinkedIn profiles. I don't know if you've noticed that, but I have. Uh, and your Facebook posts, if they're set to public, also get listed in search engines. So what you do on social media is helping your SEO, or think of it the other way, what you're not doing on social media is hurting your SEO. So just let that sink in for a minute. Backlinks play a huge part in your SEO score. They really do. A lot of people say, oh, backlinks are dead. Well, you know what? It is a basic SEO thing. So a backlink is just simply any other website linking to yours. That's a backlink. So it could be your Facebook profile linking to your website. There's a, a backlink. If you do blogging regularly, one thing that I do is I will put a synopsis of my blog into social media, and in the comments I put the link to the blog, not to my website, but directly to the blog. And again, that's a backlink. And you don't want them all going to your homepage, you want them scattered everywhere. So if you're in control of that, uh, go ahead and create some backlinks. And blogging does wonders for your SEO as well. Uh, so This is how I initially looked at blogging, like 20 years ago. It was when I put up my website, I thought, what are all of the possible words that someone is going to use to find me on the web? I mean, that is like an impossible question. And I've asked every customer I've ever had, you know, give me a list of keywords. I'm good if I get 10. I'm really lucky if I get 20. Um, but you know, it's an impossible thing. I mean, think about it. How could you know how every single person is going to find you on the internet? Well, through analytics, you can get some ideas. Like for example, one of the keywords that people type in for me is website builder. Well, to me, A website builder is like WordPress or Wix or Squarespace. It's some sort of a platform that allows you to build a website, but people use it as a person that builds a website. Well, that's not my terminology. I didn't figure anyone would ever use that. So what I do is I— or what I did when I found that out is I created blog posts around the term website builder so that when someone types that in, my blog post will show up. They'll click on it. It brings up my entire website and the menu is right there where they can go ahead and click whatever else they are interested in. So blog posts are a great way to educate your customers. It's a great way for you to stand out online. But it's an SEO tactic and a great way to allow people, uh, or to allow you to get more keywords that people are using on your website. So over the years you'll have hundreds and hundreds and thousands of keywords in your website buried in the blog posts. So it is a huge SEO advantage and it accumulates over time because none of those go away unless you go and delete them. So make sure you understand this concept. Everything you do online should link back to your website. Literally everything. Make sure every online profile is linked to your website. If you leave a review on a website, so someone asks you to give them a review, some service you've used, have them link your name or business name to your website in that review. If you participate in online forums, link those profiles to your websites. If I look at my backlink profile, um, 20+ years ago, I have, forums that I used to participate in. Those links are well aged, they're valid, and they're still linking to my website. If you write articles for like article databases or you're a guest blogger on somebody else's website, make sure that that links to your website. And if you participate in any online networks, link those profiles to your website. For example, I'm part of the Holistic Chamber of Commerce, so that's linked to my website. If you are part of a local chamber to you, make sure the profile's linked to your website. You, you get what I'm saying. Everything you do online needs to link to your website. So that's it for basic SEO. I mean, there's a ton of technical SEO, which we're not going to go into here. Um, but for basic stuff, that's all stuff that you as a business owner can do. And tomorrow we're going to dig into what backlinks are and places you can get them. See you tomorrow.
