The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
How to Make Your Expat SEO Awesome with Sarah Moon
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Get set for a thrilling journey through the intriguing world of SEO with our remarkable guest, Sarah Moon. With her roots in Luxembourg and extended stay in Ireland, Sarah
Is it possible to get SEO traction if your content and marketing is in, say English (for example!) but you live in Germany?
In this episode I talk to Sarah Moon, who is not an expat and doesn’t live in Germany. What she is, is a SEO and movement marketing expert.
Sarah is the founder of Sarah Moon & Co, a Portland, Oregon-based boutique SEO-first marketing & business strategy firm that helps audacious change-makers, thought-leaders, and transformational causes get found and make an impact. SM&Co is one of the original Squarespace Specialists, and the original marketing studio to optimize SEO services for Squarespace users.
I’ve been searching far and wide for someone who could provide guidance on how to do expat/multi-lingual SEO and she's the first and only person I’ve found who had some thoughtful, meaty answers.
Some of the things we discussed:
→ Why low search terms can be your friend
→ Why it’s important to listen for terms people use repeatedly when talking about your business IRL
→ Branded search, what it is and why it’s important for expat businesses
→ Why you should have a Google business profile even if you are a totally remote business
→ How outbound links on your website send signals about your location to Google
→ The impact of top level domain (.de vs. com)
→ SEO Considerations for setting up multilingual websites
This a nerdy but highly VALUABLE conversation if you want to up your SEO game and you’re producing content in a language differs from the region where you live.
Sarah also generously created a resource page full of free resources and a big discount code on her website just for listeners!
You can find her both at her website and on LinkedIn here:
https://sarahmoon.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmoon/
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
So I am talking to Sarah Moon today, and Sarah Moon is website SEO Movement Marketer. Extraordinaire and full disclosure. When I started this website business, I wisely bought some coaching for her from her, and she's based in Portland, oregon, so I am not going to ask her how she ended up in Germany, because she's not, but what she is is somebody who has been able to Provide some insight on how to do SEO as an expat, and I have been looking far and wide for this, and she's the first person who had some meaty Responses and answers for me. So I thought it would be great to have her on the podcast, because I work with a lot of people who are expats, obviously, and Do not Produce content in the language of the country they are living in. So welcome Sarah. Thanks for being here, thank you.
Speaker 2:I feel, I feel very special that I get to be on your, your expat podcast. Not, I have been an expat, though I will say so I have a little bit of cred. Okay, we're, we're fresh me Ireland.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and you have Luxembourgian roots, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm also a citizen of the Small but mighty country of Luxembourg.
Speaker 1:So kind of technically living in the US. You are a kind of an expat. I mean I was in the US, okay, so not really.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't think I can claim that, but you know I Do have someone at a consulate I can email should I need consular services. So I guess kind of okay Trouble somehow You're an international person.
Speaker 2:I do and I have a, and I also have a lot of clients, interestingly, who are not in the US, who are expats and lots of places, which is just a very weird Like an unintentional niche that I have and it sort of started with one person and then you know how referral networks work, yeah, amongst you know those communities, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, totally no. So let's let's actually get into that, because that was the basis of an email exchange we had, where I asked you about this and you talked, I think, about a couple of clients, one in in in Japan and one in New Zealand and one of the first things you said was expand on how some niche zero, slash, low searches we know are relevant, even if the numbers aren't super significant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is an interesting subject because I have a really controversial opinion and I have to I'm sorry to have to do a Little bit of context setting here, please, some kind of slightly boring stuff. But we talk about volume when we talk about people googling or whatever your local search engine is, because in Eastern Eastern Europe there's Yandex, there's, there's other search engines that are specific places and when we talk about searches, we use a term called volume, which basically means how often a term is searched for, and we look at that on a monthly basis and what you'll see a lot of times is a lot of SEO experts. They throw out searches that are either basically zero to like 1020, these sort of very low search terms, and I actually think that's a mistake, first of all, because there's very few terms that are never searched. Um, zero is actually just a running average. It's actually very imprecise, based on a bunch of things, especially because of the way a lot of privacy protections work in different places.
Speaker 2:All that fun stuff, but what you can do is a couple of things. One is a lot of the folks Like you own L and R. How many clients are you booking each month? You're not booking, right, right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You actually don't need to capture a massive volume, right? And if you're the person in a particular area who is the expert on X thing and you're getting five people to your website a month, mm-hmm. Odds are you're going to be the person who solves the problem. Makes sense. The other thing is we oftentimes, if we look at these related sort of small level searches Um Cumulatively together, because there's oftentimes someone doesn't just search one time, like I need a website in Unic you know English speaker like that's not how, yeah.
Speaker 2:Information. They're often I'm searching sort of multiple there. They kind of going on a quest, right, so there's thinking about different things. So if you continually pop up for some of these super narrow terms, you may have Five, ten, fifteen different terms where someone has come across you with these low number, low volume searches and even before they've ever reached out to you, they're like well, they must be a Like real expert.
Speaker 2:I keep coming across them and you know, even in my, you know I have a plan, a much more competitive space, but I actually target some very small volume keywords because I know that the person looking for the thing Like there's really no one else out out out there doing mm-hmm, what you know. So I just tar, like I have a couple, two, three blog posts that target Several keywords that are like tinnish, so that's okay, but those convert I hate that word. Convert just feels like you're trying to convince someone. But those, those get people into my ecosystem at a very, very, very high level, and so to me I'm like well, those are low effort kind of guaranteed wins. Why not reach for that?
Speaker 1:So would you then even target one that shows up in your keyword tool as zero, if it's really really relevant?
Speaker 2:If it's something, so that's a great question. If it's something I have heard real people say to me, so if it's something that I just sort of pulled out of my brain and but I've not heard anyone use that verbiage, I'm probably gonna set that aside. But if I can validate it with a real conversation with a real human, if I can, you know, look at some correspondence I've had with clients or potential client if I can even snoop on some of the forums where I know my people hang out and See that like wow, there's people talking about this, maybe this will be a trend in the future or maybe it's just not statistically relevant yet. Mm-hmm, I might consider it. So that's a real dependent. I'm a little risk averse with doing that with clients too much for myself. I absolutely will do that kind of thing as an experiment and see what happens.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, if you're targeting Corporate entities, a lot of them have very niche, almost jargoni, searches that they do Okay, and I've seen that a lot where you're like Someone's searching for that and then I'll ask a client and they're like yeah, we use that term in conversation all the time like Okay, so it's really. This is where a lot of people think about SEO. They and that means search engine optimization. I'm sorry, I just started using acronyms without even that's okay, that's fine, I'll do a preamble.
Speaker 2:All right, cool, um, but I a lot of times people will just be like, okay, what keywords can you rank for? And that's actually starting at the wrong point, because Really, you need to understand, like, who are you speaking to? How many people do you need to be speaking to? What are the chances of those people becoming potential clients, becoming leads? I think there's a lot of questions to ask first, before you ever say like, well, let's just put this keyword into the back of your website and you'll get traffic. Because, like, I get traffic for things that I don't want to get traffic for and I will actively try to, like, make that traffic go down. And because I don't want that traffic, because it's just you know you don't want people coming to your website, you can't do anything for yeah.
Speaker 1:Let me stop you right there, because that's my traditional Basic understanding of SEO. And I say multiple times I am by no means an SEO expert, but when I work with clients I realize compared to them I am oh, you know a lot. You know. My approach is okay. You get your keyword phrases, you know, together, produce some content around them and look for high volume, low competition searches.
Speaker 2:And you know, do your link building.
Speaker 1:That's like I do know it. When I have clients that are really location based, I do say you know, I think you are a good candidate for this and get your Google profile. Like I have a good wife in in like the Midlands of the UK, I'm like you need to get a Google profile. And then I, I really do think those people, I'm like I think it's great for you. When somebody is like I'm an executive coach, I'm like I don't know what to tell you here because that's really broad and whatever. So talk, take apart that understanding of SEO. For me that's a really good.
Speaker 2:That's actually a real. Those are basically almost two different trajectories, so proximity, so I'm going to talk about the first one. That location based Proximity is a massive ranking factor. Wherever you are, how close you are to the people looking for what you offer is going to have even it's going to be a factor, like even me who my business is remote, I still get a an outsized number of visitors from the Portland metropolitan area because, simply because of proximity.
Speaker 1:Can I just ask you is that because of your Google business? Is that because of your business profile or because of where you like? Google knows where you are in your region settings. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even so much as sometimes even where your hosting is located. That's less of a factor these days with, but it still is something that sometimes has an impact. Okay, you know, when you go to not if you're using a tool like Squarespace or trying to specialize in, if you have other self-hosted solutions like WordPress you'll often pick which server you're using and they always recommend you use a server that's closest to where you are. So that's why so proximity is always going to be a factor, even if you're like I'm totally remote, like why do you care where I am, even if you don't have a Google business profile?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I would actually recommend that, even if you are a totally remote business, that you consider having setting yourself up as a service area business in Google business profiles, because it does help Google to better understand what your business is about.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's trickier, so I will, with that warning, Okay, can you expand on that like a service area, like a geographical area we're talking?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay. So, for example, I have a remote business, I am, my Google profile is set up as I don't. People can't come to my fancy garage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know my kitchen, God forbid I know right, like you're not saying come to my kitchen table, yeah. So you basically say like, hey, I'm, I seek, I maybe meet with clients outside of my office in this area, which I do sometimes. So it's not a lie, it's the truth. And then you, or you know, I know you've done, you know some in-person things again. That would be absolutely true and so you can set up. There's an option in Google business profiles where you can say I'm a service area business and then you fill out, so then your address doesn't get displayed because we don't want that, okay.
Speaker 2:Again I don't want someone creeping over at my garage window like where's Sarah? Yeah, I have a client that happened to, okay and then. So you have a complete profile that you can fill out. But the real magic of the Google business profile is the ability to add updates. So that means you can add to your business profile things like if you have a new article that you've published, you know, if you are speaking at an event, if you're hosting a workshop, if you have a new service, you can put all of that as updates in your Google business profile.
Speaker 2:You can also add things like if you sell info products. So, eleanor, I believe you sell a template, right? You could add that as a product to your Google business profile and it would link directly to that product. It would say how much the product costs. It would show the description of the product.
Speaker 2:All that kind of stuff is shown right in Google, and so the really cool thing is that so this is getting to a whole other topic, but that if someone were to search for you, your profile would show up on the right hand side of the browser in Google. It would show what you do. It would show you know your reviews, which you can gather. You can ask people for reviews and then it would also show, say you're the template that you sell, or if you offer a, I have my one-off strategy session. That is right there. You can click and book. I sell strategy sessions from my Google business profile all the time. So it's one of those things that just adds to the whole understanding that Google has of your business. So it's just we're not trying to, we're not really playing a numbers game here. We're actually just trying to help the search engine understand what on earth it is we do.
Speaker 1:So this again is that I do most of this. I don't know if I do the service area, so I will change that, but then somebody has got to be looking in, so my region is German speaking. Yeah, all of my content is in English. Yep, still, google will know to Send those English speaking searches there, because I've written everything in English.
Speaker 2:Yes, the algorithm is very smart, okay, I mean, it's not smart, it's a machine, yeah, but it's been building for so long that there's a lot of nuances. It's? It's the same with Misspellings, right? So people misspell my name all the time. It's a very easy name to spell. It gets misspelled all the time. People still find me because Google understands the misspellings. Okay, it's the same with multiple languages. Um, I have a client in Japan. She does her business in English. If someone in Japan Searches for her using the Japanese version of Google, mm-hmm, they will get her English speaking content Displayed, because the search has been done in English.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about that for a second, because you mentioned, you said, if your name, my name, is my top Search. That's a mess, that's not a surprise at all. Yeah, and you mentioned in our exchange branded search. This is something I think people forget about. Expats get a ton of referrals, but a lot of times they're weirdly vague. A really, really robust about page can help a lot. So can you talk about a little bit about what you mean by branded search?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is a really interesting concept. You see a lot of. If you do a Google for branded search, you'll see a lot of it is related to things like products, um. But the same principles apply if you think about yourself as, say, a solo consultant, um. And even if you're doing business under a business name. We have a very common issue where someone won't say oh go see, you know, sparkly Apple design, I know that's not your business name, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:They'll say go talk to Eleanor. She's a really cool designer in Munich right.
Speaker 2:They. It's just the way we humans have conversations, um, and so that's how people Will kind of start. You know, a lot of folks aren't giving up business cards these days. I mean, I still have them and I I'll give clients that are I see in person, I'll give them a couple of cards. Be like, hey, if you know anyone I can help. But I can help, like give them my card. But most people don't do that these days, um, and so someone will do. They're not going to type in your full URL into the address bar. They're gonna search for you know Eleanor web designer, you know Munich, or Eleanor, you know something like that. And so, about pages are on the vast majority of websites across All kinds I'm like gesturing now across all sorts of niches and demographics Are typically the second most visited page on websites and they are also one of those pages that is massively under leveraged. Um, to help people give a real snapshot of who you are, where you are, what you do, what your skills are, all of that kind of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1:You know, they're?
Speaker 2:they usually are one of two things going on. They're either just kind of like a short bio that kind of makes an assumption that people have seen everything else, or they are effectively a sales page For a service where there's no context about who the person is. So I really encourage I think, even especially in expat community Having a really just killer about page that gives someone the whole story, where you can make a connection because, again, if you're speaking to other expats Telling a little bit of your story, you do a great job of that Talking about you know what you do and who you help, kind of making the assumption that no one is that someone hasn't seen anything else on your site. And that is really what Brandon search. All it is is you know maybe your full name, maybe it's you know your first name and what you do?
Speaker 2:Um, something, some permutation of that kind of thing can be really, really useful. Um, I mean even me, because I actually have someone with the exact same name in my same area. Oh Right, super random. Um, we shop at all the same stores and have never met.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, and I live in a small town even though it's a big city and um, but I make it really clear in my um copy, in my text on my about page, which which there are moon I am. So someone looking for the real estate agent knows they've landed in the wrong place and hopefully they don't even come to me at all. Um, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I fortunately do not have that problem. Uh, but it's a really it's and I will say there's things I know when we talked um.
Speaker 2:You know, there's things like I gave the example of another one of my clients who's um from the uk and um she's Lives in tokyo, she's bilingual, she lived, she's lived in japan for over 20 years, um and she is Um. There's executive trainings At very large companies in tokyo. So you know all the big names, right and um. She is, like I said, bilingual and so one of the important things on her About page that she mentions is that, yes, I can do this training in japanese. No, my japanese won't be perfect.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's totally fine if you make fun of me when I you know when I mess up, and but that kind of thing again, where you're assuming someone is aware of you so they found that about page In the search engine, but then making it really clear kind of what, what your abilities are. So there's a lot of stuff um that you can do with your descriptions, with your text, all that kind of stuff to make sure that it's um that you're leveraging that branded search. Okay, so that's. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. Search okay.
Speaker 1:So that's actually some of the advice I've been giving a lot of my clients lately. If they have a business name Is to keep the business name. We use the logo, but I add to the title their name because I'm like people it's perfect Most. Of your business from referrals. They're not going to be say use you know sparkly apples.
Speaker 2:Are going to say call up Sarah or whatever right and I'm glad you do that, because a lot of folks don't realize um the way that works, at how referral based businesses can actually leverage the search engine that way. Um, because it's it just kind of feels weird. Right, it's a referral, but a lot of times people google you.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I said, that's the biggest volume search I get, anyway, it's also the place to put media appearances, podcast appearances, anything that you are doing um, because also your outward links, so where you're linking to also help google understand. Oh, this is all the same person, right?
Speaker 1:No, I might write outbound links. That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:People don't talk about outbound links enough and I they're very powerful if you have certifications, if you, you know, have various qualifications, any of those kinds of things. If you link to whatever the, the institution or body is that you know, licenses, you certify to you, whatever, that's another way to help the search engine understand. Oh, yes, um, this is that person and I have a theory that that those kinds of links are going to become more important. But we'll see. We'll see if I end up being right.
Speaker 1:But I'm pretty.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty good at predicting this stuff, Okay that's a juicy tidbit, thank you. I could be wrong, but I'm usually good at predicting this kind of thing. Okay, and I actually have one more thing to add for okay please search.
Speaker 2:If you are doing um blog posts or articles or that sort of thing. Ensuring that you have a good bio at the bottom of those blog posts Will also help with that. So most content management systems squarespace, wordpress, show it, whatever you're using allow you to have kind of boil, a boilerplate bio of the author and that goes into the whole Um network of that branded search picture. So that makes you the official author in the Google sphere of that work and that will also help you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let me drill down on that a lot. So each post at the bottom has, like Elna Mayover as a Squarespace designer, etc. On every post the same thing You're the author, okay okay, and there's a whole bunch.
Speaker 2:I mean I could. We could do a whole podcast episode about this. It would bore the pants off of everyone. But so we've got Google is valuing things that they can validate. Have been written by someone with experience.
Speaker 2:So you know we, and so that's where you have. You have an opportunity basically to be like the author of this isn't I'm just gonna say it isn't a bot, it's not AI. Yeah, it's a real person who has experience. So, you know, eleanor, you know you have created eight million One day websites I mean, I assume that's around the figure and, um, you know, is you know a Squarespace designer based? You know, da da, da, da da, that, actually that sort of auto-generated Doodad I think that's the technical at the bottom of that post actually helps you, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:It's a little wild, but it's yeah, it's attempt these days to try to better understand authorship Like that. That is the long and short of it is is that Google wants to understand who has created this. Okay.
Speaker 1:I actually love it.
Speaker 2:I think that's that's great. Um, and I think there's also and I'm gonna add one other thing is it's also why, if you are creating that Organic content articles, that the resources. It's also why it's really essential to reference in the writing of those articles, like how on earth you came to these conclusions. So not just being sort of instructive but playing some context. If you are, you know someone who's an executive coach, who came from corporate. It mentioned that even in the articles that this is how you're drawing on that experience, mm-hmm, and it again helps Google understand the authorship question.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's great, thanks, this is big nerdy stuff yeah.
Speaker 2:These are the things that I think people they need something to latch on to, to understand, like how they're doing this and you know what they should do and why well, and it goes to your second part of your question about you know we were talking about location and branded search and all of that that person who's the executive coach where it's a lot trickier for them, right, because Executive coaches and coaches in general like sort of general consultants and consult, consult consultants and coaches a Lot of people don't even at the corporate level, aren't necessarily googling I need a coach, right? They may be tackling some challenge, like you know, team retention, or you know there's a litany of different challenges that they may be Tackling and they don't even know that, say, an executive coach can solve their problem.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm right, it's so, and they may have heard. You know, there may be an executive coaches come into their Workplace and done some stuff before, but maybe they weren't that great. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff. That they may not be thinking about that as a solution. And so that's where again, those, the thought, going back to the articles, kind of explaining the why, the how you got to this conclusions, what experience you draw on to To make these recommendations, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:It helps you in the search engine, but it also really helps you with Getting people to buy into what you're offering Mm-hmm. So credibility. It's not just to get people on your website. That is one of my biggest pet peeves. I have a lot of SEO pet peeves, but it's not about in the end. It's not about the traffic. Okay, it's about getting the right people onto your website and then Engaging them so they're like, oh, this, they're making that connection and they're starting to believe in what you're offering.
Speaker 1:So the traffic is the first stop, right yeah yeah, then the engagement, let me I'm jumping around to some of the things we talked about, but let's talk about I, and I'm particularly interested because I just Last month launched a project, launched a site for a magician, munich based, speaks four languages. Wow. And I said, well, let's just start with two, we'll start with German and English. But this whole idea of multi lingual websites, and we used I always call it we glott, I think some people Glow, but I always call it we glott, like I think it's gloss. Yeah, thanks, and you know we didn't. We use a top level domain. So I think it's, I think it was a dot DE, that was the one he had. But you know, you say consider a proper multilingual website if it's appropriate. Yes, what define proper multilingual website?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I want to always have. I want to with this particular thing, I want to always have to disclaimer I am not an expert in multilingual websites. I've found myself entrenched in multilingual websites previously. Yeah, Because there are some nuances beyond the SEO element. But when I say that, what I mean is something like Weglot does a lot of that for you. There's another one for WordPress as well, which the name has left me, but oh, it's just called WordPress, multilingual sites.
Speaker 1:That's why the Okay.
Speaker 2:It's a plugin and they do a really good job of automating what I would consider proper, which is the very specific way the language pages are structured, and we just did a bilingual series of pages for a local client, actually, who has English and Spanish both, and in a correctly executed multilingual site, you will see, after the name you'll have forward slash and then the appropriate language abbreviation.
Speaker 1:So German Like EN or DE yeah.
Speaker 2:DE. Yeah, like Spanish is ES, so there's various ones that are universally identified. Then it'll have slash and then the URL. There also should be, for those pages, seo titles and descriptions that are in those those distinctive languages. There should be image descriptions, again in those distinctive languages. So there's everything should be in the individual languages.
Speaker 2:And what we see a lot of is kind of sort of hacky approaches and I don't mean a hacky in like a negative, I just mean it in a that is sort of cobbled together, sort of it's like duct tape and shoestring holding together the multilingual sites, and that oftentimes doesn't do you a ton of good. So if you're going to do the multilingual thing from a search perspective, you definitely want to use one of these tools like Weglot, which is worth, absolutely worth what you pay, and then you're able to do all of that appropriate customization. You have the proper page structure, you have the proper like multilingual descriptions that Google understands. Otherwise you're honestly likely just really confusing the search engine and you're probably using your visitors as well. So that's something to keep in mind.
Speaker 2:I think that your magician is wise to use the dot DE If they are primarily working in Germany. It makes sense because it's again. Google doesn't says it's not a ranking factor, but in my experience, if you are offering something in the language this is particularly for folks who are you definitely having that country domain attached to your site by their primary or secondary is pretty smart. I think it's smart even if you're not offering something in the native language just to have it as a secondary domain.
Speaker 1:This is totally self-interested, so I do not own my DE. So you're saying I should purchase that domain and have it. I would recommend it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you can add it as a secondary, submit that secondary domain to Google. I mean, it's literally just the cost of the domain and you can submit that site map with the dot DE to Google, so why not?
Speaker 1:Okay and then. But so that means also, if people went to my name or whatever your website is dot DE, they would be redirected to your dot com site.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they can. Okay, I have a dot LU attached to my domain, okay, okay, just in case, just in case. Okay, I can't afford to live in Luxembourg, but you never know.
Speaker 1:That is great advice. I do not do that, I do not do that.
Speaker 2:And again it's one of those things Like it's probably not going to make a huge SEO difference like on its own, but it's again like one of those little things that's probably wise, is like overarching strategy, because none of these one things are going to make the difference. It's just making sure that you've captured everything regionally. I mean, there's even things such as I'm thinking of my I have several clients in Japan and there's a specific way and place that addresses are expected to be displayed on websites. And because of the complexity because Tokyo in particular is extremely dense I mean, it's just so many people in such a small space and so there's a very specific way people have their addresses. And then, but there's like kind of common, like local way that people will put their neighborhood on their website. Well, that makes sense. Obviously, you'd have the neighborhood on the website. There's lots of little things that are your local knowledge will help you out.
Speaker 1:Okay. Another thing you shared with me is that, I mean, we talked I touched briefly on backlinks, yes, but also backlinks from people in your neck of the woods, yes, or sites from your neck of the woods, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:backlinks are a hot topic. I don't know if you end up having a lot of conversations about these L&R.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't. Most people were just like I'm just getting them up to the keywords part and just understanding the basics. So backlinks is sort of like the next level and usually we don't get there.
Speaker 2:So backlinks? What they are in a nutshell is other websites that have linked to your website, and for a long time, people would talk about backlinks. As you know, the secret weapon. You know that, the thing that's gonna get you to rank in Google. Unfortunately, that led to people doing a lot of like shady link building, I would say, is the best way. So they create fake directories and link to people's websites. And then the sketchy SEO people would charge people to be part of these directories. And then another popular tactic was people would create, say, six blogs about dentists and then each of those dentist blogs would link to the SEO agency's client's dental sites.
Speaker 2:And that was a really common one. Lots of these sketchy things. Fortunately, google has gotten really wise to this stuff, and so what Google wants to see in terms of backlinks are things that are really topical and relevant. So if you are, for example, I know, oh gosh, like a lot of times they'll be in various countries they might be a expat, chamber of commerce related people from a specific country. There may be social groups or business like those kinds of things, or even people who you potentially share clients with, where you might be recommending them or they might recommend you.
Speaker 2:Those kinds of strong, those networks that you'd make in person should be the networks that you focus on in terms of backlink building. Interesting, okay, so that's where I would put my energy. And again, also things like if you have licenses and certifications and that kind of thing, a lot of times those entities will link to you as well, and that's another good authority building link. But if I say nothing else, I really want you all to understand that those backlinks that you can buy, unless it's in a real legit, professional directory, don't do it. It'll actually oftentimes it'll hurt you. It will truly hurt you. I, because I have had to for a client disavow which has said like, hey, we want nothing to do with these links. Literally for one of my clients over a thousand backlinks.
Speaker 2:They were actually dragging me down in the search engine.
Speaker 1:Okay, it was horrible.
Speaker 2:So so focus on, if you are pursuing a backlink building strategy, focus on the stuff that's high quality, that's natural, that's part of those business communities, and if your business networks aren't linking to you, it's probably something good to bring up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's a good thing that people can do for their whole community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what I'm getting from this conversation is that it's not like one thing, it's like the aggregate of several small things that will help you for Xpat, seo and, you know, working in a region that's a different language than the one you're doing business in, it's gonna be all those things together.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's Eleanor, I really like what you've done with a lot of your content. Where you have like on your blog, for example, you have some great, you know, I don't know how much. Again, I don't know how much your blog brings in traffic. Like I will say, you know I don't have that context, but there's a lot of things that folks can look to in terms of what you've done on your website and be like, oh, that's really smart. When you have talked about the folks you've interviewed, where you've talked about your personal story, like all those kinds of things I think are really why strategies for people who are doing business in a country that is not, you know, their home country, which is, I know, like a fraud, but that's folks. Folks should look at what you're doing and do more of that.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, this is a good segue into kind of what I wanna wrap up with, which was this exchange we sort of had on LinkedIn where I just put it into context, my sort of my journey with blogging and I like blogging is I realized I was Sometimes there were things I wanted to write about, and then there were like some things where I was like, okay, I want to do a blog post, it's gonna get me a lot of traffic, and so I do. You know keyword and this many words and the whole thing. And I started feeling like Now, with AI generated content and like you know the list of coal and all of this, like I'm just gonna be overrun by Robot generated content and I'm not doing it anymore. And that was a very liberating thing, like I'm just gonna write about things I want, I'm not gonna worry about search volumes and I'm done with SEO, and that was my feeling. So what say you, sarah?
Speaker 2:Moon. Well, I think you actually have touched on something that a lot of people are feeling. Frankly, I know I have had that feeling where it's like I have spent, at this point, 15 years putting high quality content out into the world and Now there's these bots that are I've literally found. What I can tell is literally someone put one of my articles into an AI, one of the large language models, and asked them to rewrite it. Um, it's like, well, this all kind of sucks, right? Yeah, I wish I had a classier way of saying it other than that this kind of sucks, but it's true and what I, I, what I believe, and I actually I Could be wrong again, because some, every once in a while, I'm wrong, but I, I was Just reading, literally yesterday, and I had this up on my screen and I closed, I closed it and I should have kept it up. So I'm going to, I'm going to Pull it up, but medium Put out a really interesting statement about the kind of content that they're going to value moving forward, and it was basically that they are Changing their whole monetization model to focus on high quality, human generated Content.
Speaker 2:And here's what they said over the lap. I'm getting to a point. So over the last few years, I remember, have told members, have told us in no uncertain terms that they are tired of clickbait and content mills. They don't want, they want quick, get rich, quick scheme siloed into constrained areas, don't want stories that are generated by AI and want to hear, in particular, human stories that deliver actual human wisdom, which I think is really interesting, because that is something that I've been having a lot of conversations with the clients about over the last.
Speaker 2:It really started kind of at the end of last year where we started using that actual phrase like human wisdom as Something that is almost a tipping point, mm-hmm, and I think there's a place where SEO and real human wisdom can live together, and I actually think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for folks like you, eleanor, who are like I have something to say, because if you have something to say about a topic, there are probably other people who are feeling that they won't have something to say or they want to hear something, and I think there's a place where those two things meet and and what we're going to see is that there's a very specific sort of that human wisdom content.
Speaker 2:I call it thought leadership. My working theory is that it's going to become more significant, like someone might find you know, say, your article about GDPR. Right, because that's a hot topic, always changing, huge to keep on top of, but what will get them to stick around in your universe Will be that sort of real human wisdom that you want to write about, and so that's why I'm encouraging folks if you have some of those Really sort of hot topic things that you have built into your content plan.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You're at a way to organically link to those the thought leadership, so that folks can really, because the thing that's gonna make the connection is that thought leadership, not the like prescriptive or instructive stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, I know I went on a very long journey there yeah and I apologize for that, but it's something that's in my head a lot to the point where we create content plans for our clients, so I call them SEO field content plans. So we usually have three to five topics that we want our clients to have Authority in the search engine in. We create a whole column I'm drawing this out with my hands because we use like a can-bam board. That is thought leadership and those can be standalone articles and or they're little bits of that real human wisdom that we would insurers infuse in every single one of those search-fueled Topics. So my point is, eleanor, I don't think you're alone. I think it's going to be. That kind of thinking is going to, with the trends that I've observed, is Is going to actually help with it differentiate in the long run. I think in the short run it's gonna suck.
Speaker 1:If I understand this right. So is that? Because my feeling right now is if you want to rank for something, there's kind of a very rigid way You've got to do it. It's got to be this many words, you got to have these headlines, I got to have keywords in them, blah, blah, blah, yeah, and if you deviate from that, like nobody's ever gonna find your stuff. So are you saying like you have to kind of live by that bit a little bit to get people there, but then draw them in with the stories, the humor, the colorful?
Speaker 2:sides. Play the game to get the eyes and then, like, hit them with the good stuff.
Speaker 1:So that okay. So you do have to kind of, for now, still follow those rules, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean I also say like I have a lot of tricky things. I do, even to kind of bend the rules. So for one example that's very common with the search in loves is how to content. I actually hate how to content, but I'm pragmatic and I understand that how to content performs very well and it's a way to quickly get visible in the search engine. So what I tell my clients to do is all right, we're gonna play this game, we're gonna plan a piece of how to content, but we're gonna flip the script and we're instead of making it like here's, step by step. So if I was talking to, I have a lot of clients who are web designers. So if I was talking to a web designer, I would say like, let's not have you have step by step how to build a website, because first of all, it's not gonna help you and secondly, it's just who wants to write that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's horrible, but can we change it to how to think differently? Here's questions to ask yourself. Can we change it to why to? Can we sort of play the game of the how to game but actually provide something that's really different and unique? And I actually see those pieces perform, outperform what I would expect, and my theory is because Google has said at search on 2022, so at the end of last year that they are in the process of tweaking their algorithm to elevate website content that provides new perspectives or deeper information, and my theory is that the algorithmic change is already in play because I see that stuff performing so well and I have some of my own content. I targeted a very competitive search that was around SEO for coaches and it got within the top five in like two days. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm just gonna shift that link with some of my clients, so I'm like I can't help you.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting is what the I think this is a good way to understand this is. I looked at what was out there and I say every single one of these was like first pick your keywords, then you want to like insert this into your SEO title, then you wanna have your SEO meta and then you wanna search, send it to Google search console. And I'm like I have clients who are like executive coaches, they are not doing, they're not gonna do that. Like what they really wanna know is is this even something that I should be trying and am I ready to do this? And so what I did is I broke down like basically, first you need to make sure you have a framework for your coaching process, because it's gonna be really hard to do SEO if you're kind of flying by the seat of your pants.
Speaker 2:Next, have you clearly identified your audience? Your audience isn't everyone. If you're a life coach, you need to be real clear on what part of life coaching you do. And so it breaks down. So it is a how to use that how to framework, because there's several steps. It breaks down really clearly, but it's all about conceptualizing and thinking through if this is the right move for you and it catapults it up.
Speaker 2:It actually beats being a piece of content I've been going for for a long time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I'm a little competitive sometimes, and but it was. But it is something that that you can use those frameworks but do so in a way that's a little subversive, which is sort of my thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, well, thanks. I think that's a good note to wrap it up on. Can you tell people where they can find you and who you help, and if you have any offers you wanna talk about you?
Speaker 2:can do that. You can find me at Sarah with an H moon like the skynet N-E-T. Some jerk has the dot com and has for like 15 years Really sucks and you can find me there. And if you go to sarahmoonenet slash expat, I have a whole page of all kinds of resources. All of my blog posts about SEO are there for you, including the one that I just talked about, so you can kind of see a model for how that flip the script concept goes.
Speaker 2:There is a really fun assessment that I've put together where you can kind of do a self assessment about what the next best step for you is in terms of your marketing journey. So it'll ask you some questions about what you've done, where you're at, and then it will give you what a really good move is. So is SEO the best next move for you? It will tell you. So that's only one of the possible answers, and there are other answers out there. There's all of my articles. There's several like cool downloads that you can grab for free. There's also a button to get 20% off anything in our shop and you just use the code XPAT if you are interested in any of the goodies we have. We have several workshops about SEO that are really good and actionable as well. So please come enjoy saramoonnet, slash XPAT and grab all the goodies.
Speaker 1:That is amazing, sarah. That is so fantastic that you put that together. Yes, I will definitely be putting that in the show notes, so all my SEO articles are there, so read away, have fun.
Speaker 2:Steal my frameworks, okay, and they are good folks.
Speaker 1:This is where it was, like my OG SEO training, so take advantage, all right. Thanks so much for coming on, sarah. It was great talking with you. I appreciate it All righty.