Crush the SERPs with Expert Website Design and Keyword Research Techniques

Hey, hi everyone. This is Ranmay here on your show, E- Coffee with Experts. Today we have Lori Highby who is the CEO and founder at Keystone Click with us. Welcome, Lori to our show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Great. Lori, before we move forward and understand, how your journey has been this far it would be great if you could introduce yourself and Keystone Click to our audiences tonight.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been in marketing I’ll just say over 20 years. We’ll leave it at that. It’s a good, nice, clean round number. I worked at two different marketing agencies before starting my own in 2008, which is Keystone Click. So we’re a strategic digital marketing agency. We help our clients build brand awareness and generate leads online.

We do that by first conducting research that ultimately helps us collect data and insights to build a strategic plan. And then we support the full implementation of that plan. But the number one focus is on making sure that we’re helping our clients achieve their business growth goals.

That’s superb. As you mentioned, it’s been 20 long years now. So as a digital marketing strategist with over, so many years of experience now, what are some of those important key insights that have gained, about the evolving landscape of digital marketing? The industry has also evolved all these years, right? And what strategies and approaches have changed over this time in terms of, getting traffic at one point was so easy? Those rankings were not that difficult to come by. So how do you see the entire landscape getting involved, in all these years?

Oh it’s changed so much. And it’s still changing every single day. It’s changing. When I first started the company, we strictly built websites and that was it. And then, our clients would come and say how do I get found on Google or What is Facebook, and should I be using it for my business? And then we would start telling them what to do. And they would come back and say can you do it for us? So that’s been our evolution, but the whole digital landscape continues to evolve. And I think because it’s overwhelming with so many different activities that you can do a lot of people are uncertain on what are the best tactics to implement.

So when it comes to being strategic about it. I like to put a lot of emphasis on understanding your customer, and I’ll probably going to talk about that a couple of other times, but figuring out where is that customer hanging out. What are the channels that they’re spending time on? And that’s really where you should be focusing your time. But at the same time, as new things come out there’s nothing wrong with learning and dipping your toe in the water. So for example, Instagram just launched threads, at least in the US it’s been launched. I know it’s not necessarily a global launch yet. But I just, joined it right away to be able to see, if is this a good channel For us for our messaging.
Is this an opportunity for our clients? Part of being on top of the evolution is being, making sure that we’re aware of how these new tools and activities are how they work and how they could potentially support our clients.

Absolutely. Talking about the evolution of the landscape and, new tools AI has been, such an important role in the recent in recent times be it content or be it a lot of other things. So what is your general opinion about it? Where are we headed? With AI?

With AI or just in general, one, I’m fascinated with what’s happening with AI, and how businesses and marketers, a lot of different industries, and a lot of different professions can lean into AI. But as marketers, it’s a great way to get inspiration and get ideas. I wouldn’t necessarily put in something and copy-paste published because that’s not necessarily really speaking to your voice and your brand but it can jump. Start that great creativity process and give you some ideas for different ways to say something, especially if you’re struggling with how to communicate a challenging topic AI can help you simplify the complexity of something so that, it’s easier for your specific audience to understand the core features and benefits of whatever it is that you’re trying to promote.

Yeah. It gives you a head start for sure, but it’s still far from being the final product that one expects it to be. And that is where you mentioned, copy-pasting. It is a very integral part of, just getting a, getting an outline and then working on it, putting the human question on and the emotional factor as well, in terms of the message that a founder wants to convey about their brand, and all of that.

So yeah, while it’s there, it gives you a head start, as you mentioned, but you still got to work on it.

100%. Yeah. It’s a starting tool. It’s not the end-all-be-all for your content creation strategy.

Absolutely. And you did mention Lori, about web design, how you all started as a web design company, and, talking about web design and development, what are those essential factors that businesses should consider when designing websites to effectively reach the target market and also convey the message in terms of, what are the value of offerings that they have to offer to their end consumer?

Sure. Yeah. So when you’re looking at redesigning your website, there are a couple of extremely important things. I call this the billboard test. So when I am talking to a new client or they have an established website that they want to uplevel. There are three very specific things that I look for and these are three vitals that I very much believe every single website and not even every website, but every single web page on your website needs to answer the first one:-

Is it clear what it is that you do? So if you think about someone’s search experience, they’re going to Google their type. Typing in something because they have a specific pain, they click on a link. And if they’re not finding the answer to that problem that they were searching for, or they’re not saying, Hey, this is exactly what I was looking for.

They’re going to hit the back button and they’re going to go look for something else. So you have to make it very easy, very clear, and obvious that you are there to solve that specific problem that they were searching for. That’s number one. The second thing is credibility. What credibility do you have that you can do the thing that you said that you’re able to do?

Credibility can come in several different forms. That can be that you’ve received awards, that you’ve gotten some media exposure for that specific solution. You can include company logos that said other companies you’ve helped solve these problems for these specific companies, client testimonials, and case studies.

There are a lot of different ways to show credibility. That helps establish trust. The third thing is to tell me what to do next. Now that you can solve my problem, you’ve proven it to me, making it easy for me to take the next step to start working for you. And I see a lot of companies miss the ball on one, two, or all three of those items, but I would say those are so important to just connect with your target market at the end of the day.

Absolutely. And the first point which you mentioned is actually from a very user experience perspective, the first 30 seconds that let’s say we land on a website becomes so critical to have that stickiness and initial trust that I searched for something, I landed up on this website, this serves me that information in the first place, right? And it’s not, even if it has it, but they’re not able to showcase it to me, then I’m back, like you mentioned, right? And that’s the lead lost. Yeah. That becomes so critical to land up and have that interest going in the first 10, to 15 seconds.

Yeah. That’s why I call it the billboard test because when you’re driving down the road, billboards. You have seven seconds to capture someone’s attention from a billboard. So really it’s the first, like you said, 10, 15 seconds if someone’s not finding what they’re looking for they’re clicking back and finding another path to pursue.

Yeah. And, another aspect of it is also, conducting keyword research because the end consumer is going to type those keywords, look for them and then land up on your website. So from that perspective, keyword research becomes very critical. And also because like we talked to a lot of brands, the keywords that they think, they should be targeting on and while you do your keyword research, you land up at a lot, many other keywords, which are actually, win situations for the brand. So what is your technique or what factors do you consider while doing that keyword research? And how do kind of balance it out in terms of targeting those high-volume keywords that everyone, dies for? Keywords or, easy wins, slow-hanging fruits to maximize Graphics and conversions?

Yeah, I very much believe that keyword research is an art and a science. So we do use tools and technology to give us the data points. Hey, this phrase was typed into Google X amount of times last month or the last 12 months in this region, that kind of data is precious and helpful. But the other important thing is to have conversations with your target customer and pay close attention to the words and phrases that they’re using while they’re talking about the problem that you are ultimately the solution for. So instead of making assumptions and talking in your specific industry language, it’s more important in my opinion to listen to your customer and hear how they’re talking about it. And then that should give you the springboard for the type of language that you should be focusing on when you’re using the tools and technology to look at the data from a high search volume, low level of competition, that’s the whole low-hanging fruit strategy.

But we also look at a mix of from a competition standpoint, how, And its, easy to difficult scale is it to outrank the other competitors that are out there. So I’d say there are several little tactics that we look at. So we look at how many competitors, are there 10 million websites that show up for this phrase? Are there, 1 million websites? If there’s 1 million I’d say that’s a lot easier to tackle versus a 10 million, volume. of competition. And where are they currently ranking now for that phrase? Are they, on the second page? And with just a little bit of tweaking and, backlink building and configuring some of their, messaging on that page we can put them on the first page or are they not even seen in Google’s eyes for that phrase? So there are a lot of factors that we look at from what are the target key phrases we want to focus on? But you said it, let’s start with the low-hanging fruit because what’s most important is to make sure that you are being seen in Google’s eyes. And if you’re being seen in at least somewhat relevant key phrases, that’s a good starting point to keep moving forward and springboard from there.

Yeah. And these are also easy wins. Your client can also see the needle moving versus targeting those high-volume keywords, which will take its course of time.

Absolutely.

Considering, the availability of so many digital marketing channels, how can B2B companies determine the most suitable mix of media to maximize their marketing efforts and achieve their goals to put across a message as well? And what factors do you feel that they should be taking into consideration while taking those calls?

Yeah, that’s a great question. And again, I think that kind of goes back to the earlier conversation that we were talking about. This industry is constantly changing. It’s a big evolution. New channels are coming up all the time.

But I would look at your customer and look at the competitive landscape and understand and listen to your customer and ask them and figure out. Hey, what channels do you spend most of your time on? Are you on LinkedIn? Are you subscribed to newsletters? Are you listening to podcasts? What, where, who’s influencing your kind of daily information, where do you get your news sources from?

So the better that you can understand what’s feeding and educating that target customer, the better you can say, okay, based on what I know about my customer, this is where I should be positioning myself. And the reason I recommend looking at your competition is this is another kind of quick win opportunity if you understand where your customer is, and then you evaluate where your competition is and you can find that there’s a hole within, there are your competitions here, but your customers here. It makes it very easy for you to say, this is where I’m going to focus my energy because no one is speaking to my customer in this space.

Yeah. Absolutely. As they say, it’s all about staying one step ahead of your competition to win that traffic that you’re targeting.

And you also touched upon, podcasts as a marketing tool or a lead gen tool. As a podcaster yourself, what advice do you have for individuals or businesses for that matter, looking to start their podcast and effectively leverage it as a marketing tool at the end of the day?

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I would say first and foremost, if you’re interested in starting a podcast, I love that. And I’m all for that, but I would recommend that you go get interviewed and be a guest on someone else’s podcast first to just make sure that you are comfortable with that experience because it’s not for everyone. Second, I would get really clear on who is the audience that you want to be speaking to and then instead of trying to speak to the masses, get clear on this is who we’re servicing and who our message is for. And make sure your message is consistently speaking to that audience. You don’t want to speak broadly because there are too many podcasts that are broadcast podcasts, but if you get really niche in a specific topic, it’s going to be a lot easier to draw the attention of that specific audience.

The next thing I’d recommend is making sure that you have a consistent schedule. So whether it’s, every Tuesday at 10 am is when your episode drops, because once you start building that audience, they expect you to have that consistency. And when that next episode is going to drop, I’ll admit when I first started, I started building that following.

And if I missed an episode, I would have people reach out to me like, Oh, I thought I was going to get an episode. Do you know what happened? So the last thing you want to do is get that audience that’s engaged and interested in hearing from you to lose interest because you’re not delivering on their expectations.

Those are probably the quick-start ones. And there are a lot of different tools and technology that make it easy to leverage. We talked about AI, there are a lot of cool things you can do with AI with podcasting, we’re recording this on Zoom. That’s what I use as a great platform to connect with people on a global basis.

But I would the last tip I would say is batch recording is amazing. So instead of trying to record something, Hey, every Tuesday at 10 o’clock, I’m going to drop an episode. So I’m going to record at nine o’clock every Tuesday, that’s not realistic, but if you can try to focus on having timeless content, then you can record half a dozen episodes, in one sitting and then drop them for the next six weeks or so.

Yeah,

Great. And I think we are probably done with the questions in terms of what we wanted to understand what insights we wanted to get from you and I’m sure our audiences would have benefited a lot, but before we let you go, I would like to play a quick rapid fire with you. I hope you’re game for it.

All right, let’s do it.

Great. What would be your favorite book?

Oh, so many of them. I would say, Ooh seven habits of highly effective people.

Okay. Your last Google search, you can check your system if you want to.

Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. We’ll see what is, let me see what I got there, My last Google search. It was Moe’s Steakhouse, which is a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I plan to host our company holiday party. I was just getting started planning that.

Oh, okay. Wonderful. Talking about holidays what was your last vacation?

Oh, I just visited my in-laws over the 4th of July holiday in Minnesota.

And let’s say if we have to make a movie on you, what genre would it be?

That’s a fun one. I would say Mixed between a, like a sitcom and a drama series.

Okay. Okay. Now the last one. Yeah. We’re not really any further, just the last one. The thing you like the most about your work, your office, or your industry at large. Yeah.

I love that, I get to meet new people and help educate them and teach them about the areas of marketing a business that I excel that, and they get excited about how they can grow their business. I love that.

Okay. Superb. So Lori, once again, thank you so much for taking the time for this podcast. And I was sure I’m sure that this must be, quite informational for our audiences. So big, thank you for that.

Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it being here. Cheers.