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Episode 142: Our Favorite Tools for Website Optimization
564 Plays3 years ago
Leah MacDaniel, SEO Specialist and Account Manager over at the Till Agency, joins me for another Brands that Books Show and Stuff Marketers Say podcast crossover episode. After chatting with her last week, we decided to follow up that episode about SEO for 2022 with another episode chatting through some of our favorite website optimization tools. In this episode we chat specifically about our favorite tools for website audits, content research, and website speed along with a few others. We don't chat only about the expensive more professional tools but also share a few affordable tools as well.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-142-our-favorite-tools-for-website-optimization/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to SEO Tools and Site Audits
00:00:06
Speaker
I think SEMrush and ARFs are too powerful for your average user, especially for somebody who's just getting started. It's like we were saying, the audits are going to turn up a long list of stuff. And if you're not quite familiar with what all those things need, you're going to look at that audit and say, there are a thousand things on my website that I need to fix, and I'm out. I'm not doing SEO anymore.
00:00:33
Speaker
So I think those tools are a little overpowered for your average user and especially for beginners.
Welcome to Brands at Book Show
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Special Guest: Leah McDaniel on SEO Tools
00:00:51
Speaker
Leah McDaniel, SEO specialist and account manager over at the Till Agency, joins me for another Brancet book and stuff marketers say podcast crossover episode.
Exploring Favorite Tools for Site Audits
00:01:00
Speaker
After chatting with her last week, we decided to follow up that episode about SEO for 2022 with another episode chatting through some of our favorite website optimization tools. In this episode, we chat specifically about our favorite tools for website audits, content research, and website speed, along with a few others.
00:01:18
Speaker
And we don't chat only about the expensive, more professional tools, but also share a few affordable tools as well. As you can probably tell, I've lost my voice. I don't think it's too bad in this episode, but I apologize if it's harder than normal to understand me.
Feedback and Suggestions Invitation
00:01:34
Speaker
You can check out the show notes at DaveyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands that Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DaveyandChrista. Now, on to the episode.
Crossover Episode Introduction
00:01:56
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of Stuff Market to Say, a live episode of Stuff Market to Say. But then also a crossover episode with Brands at Book. I am Davey Jones. I am host of both Brands at Book and Stuff Market to Say.
Deep Dive into Website Optimization Tools
00:02:09
Speaker
And I'm joined here with Leah, who is an SEO specialist and account manager over at Till Agency. And Leah had recently joined us on, I guess, our last episode, which was SEO for 2022. And I know that episode has already gone live on Brands at Book.
00:02:25
Speaker
And we talked about a lot of exciting stuff in that episode. And so I was like, hey, you need to come back. We need to record another episode real quick. So today we are focusing on website optimization and some of our favorite tools for website optimization.
Balancing Professional and User-Friendly SEO Tools
00:02:39
Speaker
And I'm really excited about this episode in particular, because we're going to talk about some, I think, awesome tools, some tools that we use on a professional level,
00:02:48
Speaker
for search engine optimization and for digital marketing. But we're also going to talk about a few tools and options for people who, where it doesn't make sense to invest in the professional tool. And I think for most people, it doesn't make sense to invest in some of the tools that we're going to talk about today. But this is just going to allow us to talk about some of the activities we do when it comes to website optimization. So first, welcome back, Leah.
00:03:11
Speaker
Thank you. It's great to be here. I was so excited. I got the email that the last episode dropped this morning. Like this is a good podcast day.
00:03:20
Speaker
That's right. That's right. And I think a good follow up to the last episode. So if you're interested in checking that out, that's SEO for 2022, talking about some things to expect next year. But as I was putting together the notes for this episode, I'd send over a few tools to you that I was really excited about. But then I got even more excited about some of the tools that you sent back to me. So some, some I recognize, some I don't. But also, there are just a lot of tools I think that are even to be more relevant for people that's sending this episode.
SEO Tool Recommendations for Beginners
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of the stuff that I sent over are things that I used when I was first getting started with SEO. When people tell you like, oh, these are the gold standard tools and you go to sign up for them and you're like, I am a solopreneur, I cannot afford those tools. So yeah, I included some tools on the list that make SEO much more approachable.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah. So really excited to dive into that. Before we get started, if you want to join us live for these episodes, we are going to host live episodes each week on Wednesday. We've been playing around with the time a little bit just to see if one time works better than another. Right now we are recording episodes live at noon Eastern on Wednesday
Live Episode Recording Schedule
00:04:32
Speaker
afternoon. So it's going to be most Wednesday afternoons unless it's, you know,
00:04:35
Speaker
Let's say we have Christmas coming up, we won't be recording the week of Christmas, for instance. So you can find out more details about that over at till.agency. All right?
Comprehensive Website Optimization Strategies
00:04:44
Speaker
But let's dive in. When we talk about website optimization layout, what kinds of things are we talking about?
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, so website optimization is a really interesting stew of a bunch of different really interconnected things. So it has to do with improving technical things on the site, things that have to do with your site speed, but it also has to do with improving your site content and improving the user experience. So all of these things kind of play together in the SEO game.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I think we have a tendency to think whenever someone talks about optimization, I think for a lot of people, their mind immediately goes to search engine optimization.
00:05:28
Speaker
Really, if you were to focus just on search engine optimization, you should, if you take a holistic approach, touch on a lot of the other aspects of website optimization as well. For instance, we might be talking about conversion optimization and trying to get more people to convert to whatever the end goal is of a given page. But search engine optimization, I think when done well, really focuses on anything to do with improving website performance.
00:05:53
Speaker
Under that, I think, is user experience, conversion optimization, technical performance updates, which you alluded to, website speed, content, I think, is even in there somewhere. That's a pretty wide umbrella that we're talking about today. We're not going to exhaust website optimization today, but we are going to talk about, I think, a few different aspects of optimization.
00:06:16
Speaker
One of those is just kind of a general site audit. Another is content. We're going to talk a little bit about improving website speed and then a few other tools that maybe are worth mentioning, but we won't have time for today. So let's dive in and start talking about maybe some of our, you know, just more broadly when we're, let's say a client comes to us or somebody says, you know, hey, I'm trying to improve my website. I don't even really know where to start. Where is it that we start?
00:06:46
Speaker
Oh, so where we would start is by running a site audit, which gives us the kind of 30,000 foot view of
00:06:55
Speaker
a site, it kind of looks at a little bit of everything. It looks at the user experience. It looks at the site speed. It looks at technical issues. And the tool that we use for those site audits is primarily SEMrush or SEMrush. And that's a really great kind of general SEO tool that can give you a whole bunch of information in one place.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. So SEMrush is one of my favorite tools. And like you said, I think it does a really good job of giving you that 360 degree look at a website. So that's typically where I want to start. And in general, what kinds of things would we find in initial audit
Typical Findings in Site Audits
00:07:41
Speaker
report? Like what are the sorts of things that, you know, maybe are going to send the alarm bells off and say, okay, this is, these are areas we want to focus.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, so pretty much every site that we look at is going to have some kind of technical errors like redirect chains and 404 like links that don't lead anywhere. So some of those kinds of user experience stuff. And then there's going to be like headings that are out of order or pages that don't have meta descriptions, things like that.
00:08:12
Speaker
I would say whenever we're doing an audit for somebody, we typically tell them that it can be overwhelming getting it back. When we get an audit back, it's like there's going to
Comparing SEMrush and Ahrefs for Site Audits
00:08:22
Speaker
be something. It's like if we rip down all the walls in our house, we're going to find something behind the wall that might need, technically needs to be fixed.
00:08:31
Speaker
But is it worth ripping down the walls in our house? For most things, probably not, right? You only ever want to do that if there was maybe a really serious issue. So, some of those things are things that ought to be fixed but aren't a huge deal. And I think that that's sort of the key I think going into using any sort of audit tool, finding that balance between or I guess maybe preventing yourself from just kind of freaking out when you see
00:08:56
Speaker
when you see the report, right? Like these tools are meant to uncover stuff. So I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but two of my favorite tools when it comes to general site audits are SEMrush and Arefs. So Arefs is just A-H-R-E-F-S. We've been using Arefs more and more lately. Do you have anything, you know, just in terms of comparing those two tools, any thoughts on either?
Using SEMrush and Ahrefs for Keyword Research
00:09:19
Speaker
Have you found yourself enjoying one more than the other?
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, so if we're just comparing SEMrush and ARUFS, I definitely find myself in SEMrush more. I think it's more user-friendly when you're just trying to get a holistic look at a site. ARUFS feels pretty technical. It feels like a scientific tool, but there are a few really specific things that I will specifically leave SEMrush and go to Ahrefs for that they just do better than SEMrush.
00:09:50
Speaker
What do you feel like those things are in particular that you value over ARUFS more than SEMrush? So the big thing is probably the competitive analysis. So on SEMrush, it doesn't really seem to get a clear idea of what your site is about. It basically takes
00:10:09
Speaker
the name of your site, like it takes your URL and finds similar URLs and says people are your competition. It's like, maybe not, maybe they're not. But ARF does a better job of really understanding what your site is about, like using the information on your site to really compare to the content of other people's sites and find your actual competition. So that's one thing that ARF does so much better.
00:10:36
Speaker
What about keyword research when it comes to, and we'll get into keyword research a little bit more when it comes to content research. So we have a few other tools that we can talk about in terms of finding topic ideas. But when it comes to keyword research, do you find that SEM rush is where you go or ARUS?
00:10:53
Speaker
I kind of switched between the two of them. I feel like they turn up different stuff, which is interesting. So I like to kind of compare their results since I have access to both of them. But if I were just going to open up one tool, it would probably be SEMrush. They have a tool called the Keyword Magic tool, which is magic. It's a great tool.
00:11:13
Speaker
It really is. I find myself more on SEMrush when I'm trying to do keyword research, also understanding sort of the current search visibility for a website. So what does a domain currently rank for or get impressions for? For ARES though, I find that anything backlinks really is my favorite tool. Yes, for sure. It definitely excels there too.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah. I would say though, between the... So if you are looking to invest in either of these two tools, I think probably SEMrush is our preferred tool from kind of a, like we said, 360 degree view.
Budget-Friendly SEO Alternatives
00:11:51
Speaker
With that said, unless you're doing SEO on a sort of professional level, it might be a bit much to invest in either of those tools. So do you have a recommendation for a maybe lower cost, more inexpensive tool that people can use to achieve something similar?
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So my recommendation would be mangools. I think is how you say it. It's a tool that's very similar to SEMrush. In fact, in some tests, mangools has outperformed SEMrush in certain areas, especially related to keyword research in terms of like accuracy. I can't remember off the top of my head what the monthly subscription price is.
00:12:33
Speaker
but it is much more accessible than signing up for something like SEMrush or ARFs. Honestly, I think SEMrush and ARFs are too powerful for your average user, especially for somebody who's just getting started. It's like we were saying, the audits are going to turn up a long list of stuff. If you're not quite familiar with what all those things need, you're going to look at that audit and say, there are a thousand things on my website that I need to fix,
00:13:03
Speaker
and i'm out like i'm good i'm not doing seo anymore so i think those tools are a little overpowered for your average user and especially for beginners and so i would definitely recommend checking out man goals that's m-a-n-g-o-o-l-s
00:13:21
Speaker
Okay, awesome. And we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes, of course, as well. So this is good segue into some keyword research. One tool that I want to mention, I think that people can use sort of on a free level for keyword research, but then also just as a broader SEO tool is Ubersuggest. That's a tool that I've used in the past, more just for tutorials for people, because like you said, it is a more inexpensive route for people. So Ubersuggest is another one is just spelled U-B-E-R suggest.
00:13:51
Speaker
But moving into content research. So, I mean, first, why would why would we even use a tool for content research?
Content Research and Audience Understanding
00:13:59
Speaker
Well, you could just go into Google and type in some things and write down the results you get.
00:14:08
Speaker
And you could do it manually. You don't need a tool, but if you're trying to get more specific with my question, it was a bad question. I guess first, why would we use a tool for content research versus just going off of intuition?
00:14:25
Speaker
Oh, gotcha. So I have run into this a lot with clients with colleagues. People think they know what their audience is asking. They think they can just intuit what people want to know and they write content
00:14:40
Speaker
based on their hunches and it doesn't take them anywhere. So you would sometimes be surprised at the way people phrase things or specific things that they're looking for kind of higher up the funnel. And so it's so much better to just find out, like just do the research and find out what people are looking for instead of just taking a guess.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly with that. First, I wouldn't downplay. I don't mean to downplay intuition. Obviously, I wanted us to get at that point, which is, we don't know what we don't know. And I think I'm always surprised having done or doing keyword research, what it is that people are actually searching for. I think for us in particular, it's important because so many things are geographic too. I remember working with a wedding photographer out West and
00:15:31
Speaker
people search by county out west, but out east where I was located, nobody searches by county, right? They search by generally the nearest big city. So had I focused on the city search instead of the county search, and of course, to a certain extent, we were focusing on both. But had I focused on maybe just the city, I probably wouldn't have gotten that site as far as we got it. So I think keyword research is really important from that perspective.
00:15:57
Speaker
I also just get, I mean, it's just such an easy way to generate more content ideas, right? Like you start, you put in what you think, like you maybe have an idea of where to start and you do that. And then, you know, you look at the related searches and then you're like, oh, that's interesting. And that actually has a ton of search volume. And all of a sudden you have all of these different ideas for content.
00:16:17
Speaker
Right, your intuition is definitely a good place to start your research. It's not where you want to end up. But if you have a hunch or a general idea of what people might be searching for, definitely start there and see where that fans out and where that takes you.
00:16:33
Speaker
So what are your favorite tools for content research? And I did phrase this
Keyword Research Tools Overview
00:16:37
Speaker
a little bit differently. So, you know, we're talking about content research and keyword research. I think really at the end of the day, we kind of mean the same thing. You know, from our perspective, it's okay. We have an idea of maybe what to create content for or what to create content around. And we're really trying to get that dialed in.
00:16:52
Speaker
on the one hand there are the SEO tools that we just talked about right now very SEO specific so they're going to give you an idea like SEM rush a roughs you were suggest man goals i'm assuming will give you an idea of what the search volume is so how many people are searching for it with maybe keyword difficulty how difficult this tool thinks it's going to be to rank for that given search
00:17:13
Speaker
It's going to give you related searches. I don't know if there's anything else I'm missing that you want to especially call out. But these other tools that we're talking about for content research are going to give you more broadly, I think, content ideas, maybe based on additional factors like social signals as well. So I just want to preface your answer with that. So what are some of your favorite content tools?
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, so probably my favorite content tool is also a budget tool that I would definitely recommend for people who aren't trying to spend thousands of dollars doing their research. And that is Keywords Everywhere, which is just a browser plugin that you turn on and just search in Google or on Pinterest or YouTube or any of those other search engines. And it will just on the page show you the search volume and the competition
00:18:07
Speaker
for the keyword that you search for, as well as related keywords and long tail keywords, which are things that might be more tangentially related. That's a super powerful tool. I love to use that. Go ahead.
00:18:23
Speaker
No, I was just going to ask, so keywords everywhere would maybe fall into, and I think I've used this a long time ago, but that would fall into maybe a more traditional SEO tool, right? Would that be correct? Yes. From a keyword research perspective. Okay, awesome. Yeah, but go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
00:18:40
Speaker
No, you're fine. So my favorite combination for when I'm just trying to brainstorm topic ideas and want to have a little bit more of that technical information about search volume and stuff is to use keywords everywhere on a site called Answer the Public, which is a search engine.
00:18:58
Speaker
but you just type in a topic that you're curious about and it will show you this whole web of things that people ask or what people search for related to that topic. And if you have keywords everywhere on at the same time, it's just, it's so much data. My background is in data management and it just makes my little nerd heart so happy.
00:19:21
Speaker
You know, I haven't used the Answer to Public and maybe you were the one that told Krista about this, but she had sent that over to me actually a few days ago and was like, hey, this is awesome. So I don't know if you were the one that shared that with her, but I saw it for the first time just a few days ago. Yeah. So I'm going to have to dig into that. That sounds really interesting.
Generating Content Ideas with BuzzSumo
00:19:39
Speaker
One of my favorite tools for content research has previously been BuzzSumo, which approaches things I think from a little bit of a different angle. I think you get some good
00:19:47
Speaker
SEO type information from BuzzSumo, but I think mostly it's going to focus on social signals and how often different content pieces are shared. But you can do some interesting competitive research as well. So if you know who your competitors are in your space, you can look at even some of their most shared articles and things like that just as you go about generating ideas.
00:20:09
Speaker
This is, I think, going to be not exciting for people, but it is a free option. Google Search Console and Google Analytics. I think people roll their eyes, though, because it feels really complicated. And I think you can take that information and do some maybe complex things with it. And tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me what you think. I think they're actually simpler tools than people maybe feel like they are, just based on the dashboards.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yes, I think that's absolutely true. They have been getting more user-friendly looking, but when you first open them up, if you're not sure what you're looking at, they're very overwhelming in kind of a similar way to ARES, honestly, where you're just like, there is so much information here, and I don't know how to even begin to read it. But yes, they're such powerful tools. I mean, really, you could not use anything except for Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
00:21:07
Speaker
and get yourself 90% of the way there. So super powerful tools. And there are so many good resources now for how to set up and use those tools that you don't need to figure it out. There is a learning curve, but you can really shorten that learning curve with spending an hour on YouTube and just walking through it.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Leveraging Google Analytics for Content Performance
00:21:30
Speaker
And one of my favorite things to do, especially towards the end of the year here, and I've talked about it in different pieces of content, especially lately, is just do a content audit with, or I'm sorry, not SEMrush, with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and just looking at basically all the content on the website and how it's performing.
00:21:46
Speaker
In Google Analytics, it's really easy to do that. You can filter by timeframe and then go over to, I think it's a behavior tab and all content and take a look at things like website traffic and how long people are spending on that page and alert you to maybe different issues if you see maybe higher bounce rates on given pages.
00:22:04
Speaker
But you can get a lot of information there. And I think at the end of the day, yeah, there might be different metrics that you don't quite understand, but there probably is a lot that you do understand, like how many visitors have gone to a page and how long they spend on that given page, right? Right.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then even in Google Search Console, I think maybe takes a little bit, there's a little bit more clicking around you have to do when you go to the Performance tab. But I spend most of my time, if you go into Google Search Console, go to Performance, and you get to see all sorts of interesting information. You want to know how you rank for different searches, go to the Performance tab in Google Search Console and take a look at your average position. Take a look at your different click-through rates.
00:22:47
Speaker
And I mean, that's, like you said, a ton of information and you don't have to pay for it. You just have to have a Google account. So I like to spend a lot of time there. And it also gives me ideas for future content to create even within
00:23:02
Speaker
respect i think especially within google search console when i'm looking at the different queries that my site isn't making impressions for i guess maybe even more so around content that i need to improve that i've already created and that's even better right because that means i don't have to create something from scratch i can go and improve something that's already on my website and moving it from page two to page one. I mean that can make a big difference in terms of search traffic.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So Google Search Console is definitely my favorite tool for tracking and analyzing content that I've already written. Just tracking how it's performing and looking at what it ends up showing up in search for. And if there is something that's showing up that I wasn't expecting, maybe I can optimize for that a little bit better or
00:23:49
Speaker
If it's showing up in searches that I didn't intend it to, maybe I need to go and tweak that way. So it's a really great way to kind of track performance over time. And it's awesome for doing, like you said, a content audit like that. Just another little tidbit. If you're using keywords everywhere in Google Search Console, like while you have it on, it will show you the keyword volume and difficulty for those keywords that you're ranking for. So in addition to
00:24:19
Speaker
the impressions and clicks that Google Search Console shows you. It also shows you the volume and stuff, which makes it easier to make your decisions all kind of in one place. I need to start using keywords everywhere. I don't know why. Yeah, you do. Yeah, based on everything you're saying. And I know it's been recommended to me before. I've definitely looked at it. But yeah, that's pretty awesome. I didn't know it had that additional feature inside of Google Search Console.
00:24:46
Speaker
We will make sure that we link to all of those. The other big category of tools that we want to talk about is assessing and improving website speed.
Improving Site Speed with GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights
00:24:54
Speaker
So tools related to website speed. I think this is probably one of the more frequent questions that we get asked. I think it's maybe more so this year because Core Web Vitals rolled out. If you don't know what Core Web Vitals is, we talked a little bit about it in our last episode. I also have a podcast episode on Brands That Book called Core Web Vitals. So you can check that out as well. But there's plenty of information online. But
00:25:14
Speaker
Essentially, assessing user experience and one of those big metrics is going to be website speed. I think a lot of the internet fails, according to Core Web Vitals. We alluded to that during our last episode. And of course, for people who don't have any context for website speed, they just see, oh, I failed and that's really bad and I got to fix it now. And if I don't, everything's going to burn down or something like that, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So the website speed is more and more important as the majority of people are making searches on their phones because
00:25:51
Speaker
I have definitely had this experience where I type a search in and it takes 10, 12 seconds for this site to load. I'm like, is this broken? I don't have time to wait for this. So I'll just exit out and click on the next result. And I think people have more patience when they're sitting at a desktop making a search maybe. But yeah, it's becoming more critical as people move toward mobile, but it's still not
00:26:17
Speaker
like a make or break thing. I think people get really obsessive about sight speed when it's not the top priority by a long shot.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think a good way to preface it is to say that like, you know, a website, a website speed test or a page speed test is not the same thing as like a user experience test, right? So they are like, so we're going to talk here about GT metrics, which is my favorite website use test. And, you know, I would love to hear if you have a different favorite tool to go to for website speed. But when you go to GT metrics and it tells you how fast your page loads like,
00:26:55
Speaker
that is not necessarily indication of how well optimized your page is. That is telling you how fast your page loads. That's it. And so you can make your page load quicker by doing things like removing all of the media on your website. That would make your page load more quickly. Does that mean your page is more optimized? Probably not, especially if that media is crucial to what you do. So if you're a photographer and you don't have any photos on your website, that's a mistake. You might score really well on your page to be test, but
00:27:25
Speaker
I have a feeling that not a lot of people are going to book you. So that's something I think they keep in mind when we talk about page speed. I think the good thing is that as Google rolls these things out, it does force people to pay attention to it a little bit more. So I think in general, more of us across the web are trying to make sure our websites load more quickly. So do you like GT metrics? Do you use something else?
00:27:49
Speaker
No, I love GTmetrics. That's definitely my go-to tool. I will often compare it with PageSpeed Insights, which is an official Google tool, especially for sites that I'm less familiar with, like if I'm working on a client site or something, just to get the official Google reading on what the site speed is, because sometimes it's a little bit off from what GTmetrics shows you.
00:28:13
Speaker
but I love GT metrics. The waterfall view is so useful when you're trying to diagnose what exactly is holding up your page from loading because it shows you a little Gantt chart of how things are loading and you just look for the biggest sections and go from there. It makes it very easy to see. I really like data visualized like that and it's great.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree that GT metrics I think is one of the more comprehensive tools and just easiest to understand. If you've never been on GT metrics before, there's probably going to be information that feels a little bit overwhelming. You just alluded to the waterfall view. So I can't remember if that shows up right away or if you have to click on the waterfall view, but either way, easy to find.
00:29:03
Speaker
But like you said, it just shows you all the resources and basically when and how quickly they're loading. And you just look for the ones that are slowing things down, and then you can start to assess from there and make decisions. And if you hire somebody to do this, this is probably what they're doing for you. It's something similar. One thing about GT metrics is
00:29:23
Speaker
If you're using the free version, I think it's only giving you a desktop reading for your site. So that's something to keep in mind. We obviously have a paid version of GC metrics so we can look from, you know, different devices and different browsers, make sure that mobile is good as well. Because if you go over to page being insights, you'll find that they're going to give you a mobile score and a desktop score. And I believe they give you that mobile for a score first. Right. So that's the that's the first one you see. And it's typically not quite as good as that. No.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to say PageSpeed Insights will show you that mobile score for free, but the GT metrics paid version might be worth it depending on how deep you're trying to dig into stuff. Another great thing about GT metrics is they don't just leave you hanging. So if they notice a problem,
00:30:13
Speaker
like your images are too large or whatever. There's a little thing you can click on the result where it'll show you like why and how to fix this. And it might not give you a super comprehensive answer, but it'll be enough to get you started. So you're not just like, I have no idea what that means. I don't even know how to begin to fix that. So GT metrics kind of gives you a little nudge at least.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, in PageSpeed Insights, I think links off to some stuff too, but it's usually Google type help, which is not quite as easy for I think the average person to understand as GTmetrics is. I would say too that from a just like benchmarking standpoint, I find that I typically go back to GTmetrics. It's not that PageSpeed Insights is not important to check. We check PageSpeed Insights for each site as well.
00:31:00
Speaker
Typically, there is core web vitals built into GT metrics, which is another reason why I like GT metrics. But the way these different GT metrics pingdom, page speed insights, and others test sites is different. And I should have refreshed myself on exactly how they're different before this.
00:31:22
Speaker
But I do find going back to GTmetrics and using that as a benchmark is what's served me best in the
Optimizing Image-Heavy Sites
00:31:28
Speaker
past. So that's my favorite tool. But I use it in conjunction with tools like... So I use that typically for my assessment. And then I like WP Rocket and ImageFi. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. But ImageFi is a tool made by the same company as WP Rocket. So they're the same company, two different products, and they work really well together.
00:31:48
Speaker
I typically use those tools for actually trying to improve performance on my website. Those aren't the only two things that we would use, but I think they can get you a lot of the way there without having to go and make any sort of technical or structural changes to your website. For sure. So I use WP Rocket on sites that I work on as well, and it definitely does a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
00:32:15
Speaker
in a pretty user-friendly, you just click the little toggle button, you don't have to go in and change any code or anything. So WP Rocket definitely does a lot of the heavy lifting. I use Short Pixel, which basically is the same thing as Imageify, but it's a must-have for image-heavy sites. I'm also a photographer, and if I wasn't compressing my images, my site would never load.
00:32:43
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. And ShortPixel, I've heard really good things about as well. There's another team member over at Dave and Krista that highly recommends ShortPixel too. So that's a tool you wouldn't need both imageify and ShortPixel. So those two tools do something similar. So there'd be no reason to have both of them.
00:33:02
Speaker
Right. That's actually a very good thing to point out. I have had people say like, I'm running my images through, what is it like JPEG mini and short pixel. And then I upload them and they they're super grainy. It's like, why are you running them through two tools? Like just find one that you really like that works for your site and works for the way your brain works and just use one. You don't want to be running your images through multiple different compressors.
Choosing Essential Tools for Optimization
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. And we have a few more things to go through here, but we're kind of wrapping up our discussion about tools right now. And that's an important thing. I just, you know, just to add to that Leah is less is more. I think when it comes to tools, you know, there are a lot of tools that we just mentioned today. You don't have to use them all, right? Like for instance, in each category, like if you picked, if you wanted, if you just got SEM rush, for instance, like that could help you with
00:33:56
Speaker
most of the first few things that we talked about. So keyword research, audits, good kind of all around tool, and then you wouldn't necessarily need to get any of these content research tools, right? Or Ubersuggest or Mangels or whatnot. But there's no reason that you have to go out and get Mangels keyword research, I'm sorry, Mangels, SEMrush, Ubersuggest,
00:34:18
Speaker
Yeah right you like for the average person i think just having one of those tools is gonna suffice same thing goes with seo plugins you know the amount of times that people are like i'm running right back and i'm running yes and it's like. You don't you don't wanna run both those things one it's going to slow down your site is going to put more burden you know in terms of performance on your website.
00:34:37
Speaker
And they do the same thing. So pretty much anything you do with Yoast, you can do with RankMath. So you only need to choose one. So we're not suggesting, the point of this episode, I guess, is not to say, hey, you need to go out and get all of these tools. It's like here, here are some of our favorites. If there's an issue you're trying to solve right now, pick one and use it. Yeah, so if I had to make a recommendation, if you were going to get one tool off of this list to get you started,
00:35:04
Speaker
get keywords everywhere. I think it's the most user-friendly. There's no learning curve. And then you can kind of see what you need from there. But I think if you just got keywords everywhere, you'd get a lot of the way to where you need it to go. Like you could do a lot of optimization on your site with just the information you could get from keywords everywhere. And then I would say, yeah, maybe get like a man goals or an Uber suggest if you're trying to stay more on the budget end of things.
00:35:32
Speaker
You definitely don't want to have too many of these tools, even myself as a professional who does this for clients. If I'm trying to look at all of the data in both ARUS and SEMrush, for example, it's too much. You can't take action on all of the things that it's telling you about. So just pick one and don't worry about necessarily whether it's the best one. Just pick one that you like and that you can use and you'll do just fine.
Importance of Content Optimization Work
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah, and the only thing I'll add to that is that tools themselves don't fix anything. Just by installing Yoast, that doesn't mean the SEO. You haven't done any SEO at that point. There are certain things maybe that have been done a little bit, I guess, in the background by just installing one of those plugins, but there are still
00:36:21
Speaker
things that you need to do to optimize your website and it won't fix broken content. So last thing I say about that, moving on to, you know, one, I guess it's just a few other questions. One, any other tools that you would recommend? And then I want to get into kind of like, what sorts of tasks make the biggest difference and where people should focus their time? And then what should people do on their own versus what should they consider hiring out? So let's just first start with any other tools that you think deserve honorable mention.
00:36:48
Speaker
Hmm, let me see. Honorable mention. So the Yoast plugin, I guess we mentioned that. That's worth an honorable mention. And none other that I can really think of off the top of my head right now. How about you, Davey?
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of mentioned other stuff as we went through the episode. Typically, I've been using RankMath versus Yoast lately. I prefer RankMath. I just feel like it has a wider feature set. The free version, I think, provides maybe the widest feature set of any free SEO plugin. And the paid version, which is what we use, I think is great. SEOPress is another one that I like, I think, before
00:37:29
Speaker
going to Yoast. With that said, if you have Yoast on your website and you're not experiencing any issues, I'm not saying that you have to go out and get one of those other ones. So moving on in terms of what sorts of optimization tasks make the biggest difference? Where should people be focusing their time?
00:37:44
Speaker
That's difficult because it's hard for me to say with any like real, you know, like I said, I'm a data nerd and I don't have the data to really back up and say one specific thing is going to make the most difference. And like I was saying at the top, a lot of these things really overlap with each other. So if you're working on optimizing your site speed, for example, you're also working on your user experience at the same time.
00:38:10
Speaker
And SEO moves kind of slow. I hate to say that because people are like, oh, slow is bad, like I'm done. But you're not going to see instant results from SEO. And so it can be hard to say like, okay, this improvement I'm seeing is specifically because of this action that I took six months ago. Unless you're only doing one thing every six months, you might be able to narrow it down there. But
00:38:36
Speaker
Anecdotally, I would say that working on content, like doing a deep dive into keyword research or topic research, working on kind of fixing the existing keyword mapping of your site, by which I mean like which keywords are you targeting with which pages and making sure that you don't have any keyword cannibalization going on, working on that, and then
00:39:01
Speaker
well-written, well-researched articles, whether you write them yourself or pay somebody to write them for you, I think focusing on that kind of content end is really gonna take you the farthest if you were just going to focus on one area.
00:39:16
Speaker
Content is a great answer if you don't know where to start, start with your content. Because at the end of the day, if you're not creating great content, you have nothing to optimize. So that would be the first place I'd say to start. From there, I've seen big jumps for people just by going in and making sure that they set keyword research page titles and meta descriptions. Meta description is obviously not a ranking factor, but certainly can increase click-through rate. But for a site that has a ton of content that's never really been optimized,
00:39:44
Speaker
You know, sometimes that really does make a difference. So I think that you can see, I don't know, some progress there, for sure. When it comes to website speed, that's one of those areas where I feel like, you know, if you're going from like, if you're taking like just decimals off of your
00:40:01
Speaker
website speed, as far as impact goes, I don't know. It's always a good thing to improve. If you notice your website is super slow, you can probably do two or three things that are relatively simple that are going to make a big impact. So I would focus on those. But then if you get your website and it's loaded in like 2.1 seconds and best practice is two seconds, and then you spend 10 days trying to shave off that 0.1, that's probably not the best you see your time. So
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's I mean ballpark I think what I would say just in terms of like what sorts of optimizations make make the biggest difference But I wholeheartedly agree, you know, especially if you're just getting started content is where I would focus my efforts. Yeah Go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. No after you I was going to say and working on content is a great place to start because you don't need to
00:40:56
Speaker
a big expensive tool to do that. Like you can do content research for free or nearly free. And so if you're just getting started and you just want to see some movement on your site before you make a big investment, either into having somebody do this for you or into getting a tool, just creating some good content is something you can do almost just for the cost of your time.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So as far as basically what should people be doing on their own? What should they be spending their time on? And what should they consider hiring out? Yeah, so I think the calculus there is how much is your time worth? And that answer is going to be completely different depending on people's businesses and where they are kind of in
00:41:44
Speaker
in the phases of whether they're just getting started or whether they're an established business. SEO is, it takes some time both to do the work that is needed and then to see the results, but it's really not as scary or hard as I think some people think it is. I think your average person can do SEO with a little bit of time to learn what they're looking at.
00:42:10
Speaker
Do you need to outsource SEO stuff? Probably not if you've got lots of time and no money. There are some maybe developer kind of stuff, the very technical fixes, but that's the last 10% of the whole SEO effort.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it just depends on how much time you have to dedicate to this, but it's not hard. It's not something that you could not figure out for yourself. I know that it can be overwhelming, especially when you're looking at some of these tools, but it's not an insurmountable thing.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, one of the hard things about this question, right? And so there's going to be no definitive answer is that, like you said, everybody's time is, you know, worth something different to them. You know, too, I'd say most of us can pretty much figure anything out, right? Like short of building a rocket ship, you know, I could have built my own house. I could have figured that out. The end result and the amount of time that it would have taken would be drastically different than had a professional done it.
00:43:18
Speaker
I think as far as content goes, I'm a big believer that especially if you're first getting started, learning how to create good content is just a great skill to have. I think for any business owner, just learning some copywriting can go a long way. But at the end of the day, do you want to be the one that's fixing technical errors on your website?
00:43:40
Speaker
Again, for most people, that's probably not worth their time, especially when it comes to maybe some other optimization in the way of website speed and trying to figure all of that out, but probably not worth your time. Yeah, so not a perfect answer. If anybody has a question about that, happy to answer. Happy to make more specific recommendations. But Lea, I do want to say thanks again for your time. Anything that we didn't cover today that you wish we had mentioned?
00:44:06
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, I could teach a semester-long course on writing content, but I feel like you've already covered that pretty well with other episodes.
00:44:17
Speaker
Well, we can never cover it enough, you know, and honestly, so we've we've had, you know, on brands that book, at least we've had a number of episodes on copywriting on the Till podcast, Stuff Markers say, our copywriter or one of our copywriters, Sarah Clongarbo has shared a few copywriting tips with us as well. And that's a great episode to check out. But we haven't really talked about copywriting from an SEO perspective. So perhaps that will be the third episode we have you back on.
00:44:45
Speaker
All right. Well, that sounds good. I'm excited for that. Awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks again for joining us today. And for those of you who are listening but wish you had listened live so that you could ask your questions live, you can register for the next live recording over at till.agency. There's a bar at the top of the website. Just click on that. It will tell you what next week's topic is.
00:45:06
Speaker
and then you'll be able to register there. It's free. You can show up, you can ask questions, you cannot ask questions. But I do think that things tend to be more enjoyable when there's people here and there's questions to be answered. So anyways, hope we see you soon and thanks for joining us for another episode of Stuff Marketers Day. Yeah, thank you for having me.
00:45:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.