Is SEO dead?

Welcome to the Boosie Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson and I've got something special for you today. So recently I was invited by Hostfully to come and do a special webinar for them and we talked about direct bookings. We went for a good hour, it was really good. And I reached out to them afterwards and saying could I please have a copy of that? I would love to turn that hour into a couple of short episodes of the Bruce Lee podcast. And you know, I know a Hostfully well and they said yes. So I have got a little segment of our chat to share with you now. What I love about it is that Hostfully are also sponsoring this episode. So if you're wondering who is Hostfully, then they are one that you should get on your radar. They are the market leaders for the online digital guidebooks. Please, in 2021 get a digital guidebook. The cool thing is this is free. So F R E E. We know you love the free stuff. So go to hostfully.com go get your free digital guidebook. If you ever want to upgrade and get more digital guidebooks then you do have to pay. But it's a very low cost and if you put in boostly 2m you'll even get a little discount which is exclusive to team Boostly people. They also do PMS software, property management software. So if you're looking to change and you want to get a good one, they are one of the best multiple award winners. Our website that we create at Boostly links straight into Hostfully. It's fantastic. We love it, it's fun, it's really easy to use, really easy to set up and your guests will love it too. So please do go check them out and do mention that you came from Boostly because they will look you for that. So let's get on with it. You're going to go straight in and what we're going to talk about today will be something very much direct booking related. The next person that you will see will be myself. You'll have David Jacoby and you'll have Brad from Hostfully. So let's get on with the show.

How do I set up and optimize SEO? So can you. You kind of talked a little bit about it but like what are some clear concrete tips of getting what does SEO mean and how can you, if you're not tech savvy, how can you like optimize your, your website and what else can you do to, to appear in the search Google searches?

You know what it's, it's it's the most because we do website design.

It's the most.

Number one asked question that we get is when we have a website where we rank number one and they talk about SEO and it's amazing. And I don't mean this disparately, you know, or anything like that. I say it with a smile on my face. Whenever I get this question asked, I ask back, what does SEO even mean? What do you think SEO means? And they just literally just look at me with a plain face and I just go, I don't know.

I just thought I'd ask it. I just heard it's a buzzword.

And SEO is ridiculously hard. There are experts out there that spend years trying to get ranked number one ranked number one on Google. But the, the honest truth is, is that you could spend months, years, lots and lots of money hiring people, doing all of the things to try and rank for a specific keyword, and you'd manage to get to number one. But the problem is, is that even when you rank number one, you've still got a big map in the way above you, the Google map. And then you've now got rich snippets, which is a whole other conversation. And then you've got ads. So even if you manage to spend all this money, time and effort and waste so many hours trying to do it, you're still halfway down page number one. And, you know, don't even kid yourself with page two. Nobody goes to page two. So, yes, SEO is there, and SEO is SEO. And there are some really good people that can do this for you. Alan egan being number one. Damien Sheridan, just go on LinkedIn. Damien Sheridan's on there. Phil Tester from Laurels Tech. L A U I Tech. He helps Boostly. He helps me with my SEO because I haven't got the time, the effort.

The inclination to even try and get.

My head around it. So there are some really good people that you can pay to do it. If you want to try and give it a crack yourself, then there are plugins that can help Yoast Y O A S T Yoast plugin A Boostly we put a Yoast plugin as standard with every one of our websites because people ask for it and, you know, we do the very minimal setup and we just say, listen, this is all on you.

You go for it.

We will do. We'll give you the basics. But the most important thing, and it's where so many people fall down, is that they write the content. They write their website for Google, so they write it with keywords in mind. That's ridiculous. That's bananas. Because it's not Google that's going to come and stay with you. An algorithm is not going to prop up and knock on your door and pay you to stay with you. The guest is. The user is your future potential guest. So don't fall in the trap. If you want the most shortcuttest way of getting to number one, pay for it. You've got to pay to play, unfortunately, in this world. So whether that's Facebook, whether that's TripAdvisor, whatever, SEO. Because SEO, search engine algorithm, algorithm search engine optimization isn't just Google, it's Bing, it's Brave, It's Airbnb's an SEO. You've got TripAdvisors, SEO, booking.com SEO. Everything's got some form of search engine algorithm that you've got to try and crack. So if you want to, if you want to get a shortcut to the top, pay for it. If not, then just focus on making a really good website.

Go back to the first tip, the.

First tip that I said, text your people, text your friends and then give them a link to your website. Make sure your website is amazing. And if you're not sure that your website amazing, just come to Boostly, we'll give you an amazing one and then you just literally go from there. So don't worry about SEO. It's. And I know I'm going to get a message from Damien Sheridan calling me an idiot because he's obviously big on the SEO, but it's just, I just look at it from all of the other angles, point of view.