135: Expert SEO Tips for Wedding Professionals

Dolly Delong: Welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems and workflow BFF and guide, Dolly DeLong. Today, I am so excited to share a guest. I have been following her for quite some time now—a little over a year now. I first heard about her on Elizabeth McCravey’s Breakthrough Brand podcast. So, you know, I’ve spoken about this podcast several times. I’ve had Elizabeth McCravey on, and I was thrilled when this guest agreed to come on my show to chat about S E O. So I won’t tease it out any longer. I’m Sarah Dunn, and I’m on the podcast today. Before she comes on, I wanted to do a little formal introduction.

Sarah Dunn is a wedding SEO specialist for wedding planners, photographers, venues, and other wedding professionals who want their websites to rank higher on Google. With a knack for making SEO easy to understand, she’s created a unique wedding SEO framework that simplifies what it takes to get your wedding business in front of your dream clients.

Now, Sarah has been featured by Honeybook, Special Events, and NACE. I hope I’m pronouncing that right. She was named a Wedding Pro Educator for 2023 and has presented to audiences including Wedding Pro, WIPA, Wedding MBA, and Two Bright Lights. Lastly, Her framework has helped over 1 million searchers find the wedding pros and advice they seek. They’re looking to be ready to reach rockstar status on Google. Sarah’s ready to be your geeky best friend who shows you how, so Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Dunn: Hi Dolly! I am thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting me so we can geek out together.

Dolly Delong: Yeah, of course. Like I mentioned earlier, before we hit record, And when I was doing that introduction for you, like literally when I virtually met you through Elizabeth McCramey’s podcast, like another show I love, you all know, I love Elizabeth. I. I knew I wanted to have you. And then after, I didn’t mention this, but after that, a handful of people reached out to me and recommended that you be on the podcast.

So I was like, I need to reach out to Sarah because Sarah does SEO. And so I love my listeners. I want to connect them with excellent experts in SEO. I’m excited to hear your take on setting up systems and workflows for SEO. So again, I’m so thrilled you’re here. Dunn: Well, I’m delighted to be here, and I didn’t know those recommendations, so that is so kind. I love podcasts. They’re a way to learn something small, actionable, and, hopefully, something people can take away. And so I appreciate the opportunity to be here so we can dig into how SEO can be a system. So, I think this is a perfect fit.

Dolly Delong: Yeah, and for those of you who are brand new to this podcast, first of all, thank you for joining us and listening in. Secondly, don’t tune in because I know SEO can be, like, it feels like a beast. It feels like a beast. If you take baby steps and action steps, I promise you will be laying out a perfect foundation for your business, no matter what type of business you have, because this is needed for all kinds of companies.

So, before we get into your mini-master SEO mastermind, Sarah, what is your definition of SEO outside search engine optimization?

Sarah Dunn: Well, I’m glad you are. I have never liked to jump into a podcast interview or training without starting at that very step. And I always like to say no ignorant questions. So, sometimes the question is just Sarah: what is SEO? So my definition is yes, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s what it does to help your website and business appear higher on search engines. Usually, when I’m talking about search engines, we talk about Google because most searches on search engines are done on Google. Still, these same principles also apply to getting found on Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines.

We can do these things to improve a business on Google without paying any money. The magic and fun of SEO is that we are just learning how to appeal to what search engines are looking for so that they can show us thousands of searches every month for free.

So, what we’re not about in SEO is Google advertising. This is not where you pay Google money; they put you at the top of the search results. This is where you build authority and trust and make yourself relevant to what people are searching for online so that Google puts you right up there when people search for precisely what you do and what you have to offer.

To me, SEO is magic, but it’s also sia te, and there are things that we, as SEO experts, actually study and try to figure out. OK, what’s Googwhat’s asking for? What can we do to help a website move up? We see consistent results for different websites where we do these things.

Then we say, OK, well, these are our SEO steps that seem to work to appeal to search engines. And that’s what that’s in SEO: we learn steps that help a search engine understand your business, website, and content. Does that make sense?

Dolly Delong: It makes sense. And I also love that you mentioned that you can take steps that don’t involve paying Don’te or Meta or anything, like any ads. This is all organic marketing, and this can be done for free. So if you are like me and you are free, you are free 99. And you also are wearing all the hats in your business, trying to figure out how to work and make Google work for you.

SEO is one of the foundational keys. So I’m glad that you mentioned that, Sarah.

Sarah Dunn: Yes, we love free things, and learning these skills can help you get more traffic for free over time when you figure out how it works and follow the steps. So, I always think of it as a game where we try something and then see how it works.

And you know, there are signs that as you move up higher on page one and get more traffic to your website, you’re winning a game. So, I think you might like SEO for my competitive listeners who feel they’re winning things.

Dolly Delong: Oh, yes, for sure. I can relate to

so, Sarah, before we dive into some helpful SEO tips from you, I’m curious to know why you specifically work with wedding professionals.

Sarah Dunn: Yes. I admit, Oprah, why wouldn’t you work every business online? Everyone wants to get found on Google. That doesn’t make sense; my background is as a generalist digital marketer. So, when I started my business in 2012, I would work with any company, and we would offer any service.

So, web design was the core business, but we also did logos, branding, billboards, and flyers, and you need them to market your business. Let me figure it out. And I found that, yes, we could do an excellent job at all of those things, but we really at any of them. It is hard to keep up with what Facebook is doing, how social media works, and how Google works.

How about conversion optimization on a website? It’s hard to be. It’s talented at all of those things. As a competitive person, I wanted to do one thing. Better than anybody else. For example, I want to get good at one particular thing. And when I did my first project for a wedding planner whose website had fallen, fallen, lost in the search results after a website redesign, I was like, This is fun.

I enjoyed the client and the subject matter. We had a great time working together to get her back to page one for an essential keyword for her business. And I said this: This is it. I want to do this all day, every day. Because I only work with wedding industry businesses, I get to study the trends in one particular type of searcher.

So, I sometimes say that I specialize in understanding how engaged couples search online, which differs from people’s search for other types of businesses. You will search differently if you need a plumber to fix something specific. 

Your behavior will differ from someone making a huge decision about where to get married now; they will go slower and do more searches. We need to figure out how to appeal to someone making an extensive life choice, so I love to study that audience.

In addition to working with this type of business, it allows me to see trends sometimes before other marketers who work in this same industry and will enable us to try things out that become best practices that we can apply across, you know, 30 wedding venue websites or, you know, ten different wedding photographers.

Everyone benefits when we figure out something that’s working well. By being more specific, we can do that job and better understand the audience we’re trying to reach.

Dolly Delong: I think there’s much in what you just shared, Sarah, outside SEO wisdom. The wisdom is in being okay, OK, and not knowing everything. That’s something I struggle with. I want to be a know-it-That’sout everything, but if I’m a know-it-all, then it’s exhausting, and also, I would have a mass; what is that I’m looking for?

Sarah Dunn: Jack of all trades, but

masI’m of none.

Dolly Delong: Exactly. And I don’t want to fall into that category. So, it’s hard, but no trip is needed, especially if you wish to go, especially as a business owner. If you know, technically, you know, enough to be dangerous and you want a job, but you also know that’s not my specialty.

I need to hand this off to someone else. It’s hard—hard. So I applaud you for doing that.

Sarah DIt’s Yeah, well, it’s been one of the best things I have done for my business. It’s hard to say that I will eliminate 99. 9 percent of It’somers, but it’s fantastic when you do that. It becomes more apparent to people what you do and who you work with. And so I get more referrals now than I ever got when I said we’d work with anyone who needs a website.

So even with a smaller target, we get more business than being more general, which is hard to believe but truly is possible.

Dolly Delong: Wow. And even in quote-unquote, like supposedly we’re going through this, I don’t want to call it a renewer, but a weird economic don’tPhase right now year. And so, um, that’s encouraging to hear. So, everyone, it’s okay, OKhat sown. It is OK to serve one target audience. So, okay.OK, that wasn’t how we got sidetracked a little bit. I just wanted to let you know that I couldn’t convince people, but Sarah, let’s dive into your SEO strategy session.

Sarah Dunn: I will say we can go ahead and talk about SEO in a much more general way that works for any business, even if someone’s not in the wedding industry. So don’t hit someone if you’re not in the wedding industry. We will talk about how SEO can be applied to everyone.

All

Dolly Delong: Awesome. That’s great. All right. So, pencils out people. Let’s that’s notes.

Sarah Dunn: Let’s discuss SEO basics and the number. Let’s step number one, where you should start if you want to get more information on Google. If you’ve never heard of the term keywords, that’s where we begin.

Keywords are those people who type into a search engine when looking for a service provider or a question. When they’re about keywords, it’s those phrases, usually more than one word, that someone’s typing in to get found. And here’s why this is important as a business owner and website: you need to understand what someone would be searching for if you are the solution.

Sometimes, we make some wrong assumptions about what people might search for. Many people have invented a service or offer a new category of business. You might not realize that nobody knows how to search for that. For example, I received an inquiry from someone who is a virtual wedding planner.

So basically, she’s like a wedding planner. Wedding coach, where she helps couples and works with them through virtual sessions on how they plan their weddings. And she was like, how do I get found more in search engines? And we discovered that would be tricky for her because people didn’t know a virtual wedding coach existed.

That wasn’t the case, so I didn’t search for it on Google. Now, that didn’t mean all was lost for her because people still didn’t answer any questions where she knew the answer and had the expertise. So, her strategy was to move toward educational content on her blog, where she would find common questions. She’d write an informational article with the answer and great aShe’d and then would end that post with, I can help you with this if you’d like to book a virtual session with me, and she can introduce that person’s services.

So when we think about keywords, it can be something that describes your service if the searcher is solution aware, like they know exactly what you have to offer. They, you know, they need someone to set up a Dubsado system or something like that. Or it can be more informational and a common question.

Either way, there are keywords that people are typing in, and these are words we need to use on the website if Google is going to show us for that search. So, when thinking about keywords, one of the first things I recommend is that you start with some brainstorming. So, if you’ve got your pencil and paper out, now’s a great time to pause for two minutes to brainstorm. What might someone be searching for when I am the answer or when I have the answer? There’s no wrong answer so that you can write out every idea. I like to do this. There’s a spreadsheet because it makes copying, pasting, and taking it to other places more accessible.

You can do it with pencil and paper, though. Brainstorm all the ideas you have about what people might be searching for. That’s step one.

Dolly Delong: How long do you recommend a person do this? Well, youThat’stwo minutes. Set a timer for maybe five minutes because I know some people, including myself, can get overwhelmed with step one.

We think we have to perfect all the keywords. Can you give the listeners permission not to get it right the first time or perfect the first time?

Sarah Dunn: Yeah. And also that there is not necessarily a correct answer. So, step one is a brainstorming phase. It’s throwing everything on your paper, and then we can move on to step two. We will look at some of these keywords and use available tools to guide you in your decision.

So, in step one, whether it’s two minutes, five minutes, ten, or however long it takes you to get all those things out of your brain and onto your paper or spreadsheet, all answers are correct at this point, and then we’ll move on to step two. Does that sound good?

Dolly Delong: That sounds perfect, right, listeners? Let’s say you paused this episode and did a five-minute exercise. Okay,  I got your key terms and keywords. Now, let’s dive into step two.

Sarah Dunn: All right. So, in steps one and two, we analyze the keyword idOK, And I know. This can be tricky to follow when we’re on an audio platform, but I will talk you through using a free tool called Uwe’reggest. So Ubersuggest. Com is where you can go and enter one of your keyword ideas, and the tool will tell you if people are searching for this online or not.

So, I’d like you to scan the extensive list and let your eyes fall on something that describes business overall. Our goal here is to select your home page keyword, which is one phrase that describes your overall business. So for me, that’s a wedding.

SEO For many of my clients, it’s location-specific, like Louisville wedding venue, for an online venue, maybe a business coach for women, or something like that. So, what is a phrase that describes your business overall? If you, without any more information, what would you love to get found on Google?

Please type in or copy that one. Put it into Uber suggest.com, and then click enter. It should tell you how many times that keyword is searched every single month. It’s good news if it’s more than zero. So, sometimes, it will come back with a zero or an N A, which usually means it’s not something we are searching for.

So, something like a virtual wedding coach would probably bring us zero. And that’s helpful information because then we learn, Okay,  OK, we either need to describe ourselves differently or maybe that’s creating a whole new market category. We’re going to have to shift strategy a little bit.

I want to see if UbersuggestOKu can find a keyword that describes our business overall with a search volume more significant than ten searches a month. So that’s where we use the tool.

Dolly Delong: Is UberSuggest free, or is there a paid version? What do you recommend?

Sarah, that’s fine. Well, minimal free searches are available on Ubersuggest. It is; they keep changing it. So, even if I say something on this podcast, it’ll probably be different next week. But last I looked, you could do one to three free searches daily. You can also do an all-day free trial.

That’s what I usually recommend to my SEO students. So, if you’re one of those students digging into keywords for the first time, sign up for the seven-day free trial so you can try ideas and compare them, and then you can go ahead and cancel. But if SEO is something you would want to work on on an ongoing basis, Ubersuggest is one of the most affordable SEO tools and even has a lifetime plan.

So, it is approachable for some business owners, but the trial will also get you far.

Dolly Delong: Awesome. I use Ubersuggest very lightly, and the things that always come out are incredible. And so, I highly recommend checking those listeners out. Do you? I’m sure you’re going into this, but I will ask you about this anyway. Do you have other keyword research-related apps or tools you would like to use for the listeners?

Sarah Dunn: Yeah, there’s all sorts of things out there, so Keywords Everywhere is popular. It is now a paid tool, but it will give you related keywords where you search on Google. So it’s like a Chrome extension that can be cool and helpful. I do a lot of work on a big tool called SEMrush, but that one is more expensive.

So, it’s not generally approachable for a small business owner. Another one is Answer the Public, a tool that can give you many content ideas. It brings up questions that many people ask online, so if you’re looking for content ideas, Answer the Public can also be a great resource.

There are many keyword research tools out there. You can go down many rabbit holes for hours and hours. I would probably stick with Ubersuggest because it is reasonably easy to use.

Dolly Delong: Awesome. Good to know. All right, let’s stick with Uber Suggest, then. And we have plugged in the critical term like you gave an example, Louisville, wedding. What was

Sarah Dunn: Venue?

Dolly Delong: Venue. Venue. Okay. And so where, what should we do from there?

Sarah Dunn: Okay. OK, we’ve confirmed that people are searching for Louisville Wedding Venues. It feels like a perfect keyword that describes where we’re located and what we have to offer; our next OK is to use that keyword on the website. And I can’t tell you how many people come to me with a website. Awe’reey’s like, Sarah, what’s your website?

I want to rank for Louisville Wedding Venue. I can’t figure out why I’m on page 7. I’mcan’trustrated. I looked at the homepage of their website, and they’re on it. What’s the exact phrase, Louisville Wedding Venue? They say something: we are a celebration space in iI’mouisville, Kentucky, ready for life’s greatest moments.

You know, like this kind of marketing copy where instead of they’re like, Oh, we’re going to be more creative, and we’re not going to say wedding venue. We’re going live in a celebration space. I’m like, I love that for you. But we also need to make sure we are using it. The keyword we want to gerund for, or Google, will be confuWe’reGoogle is a robot. And if you have different competitors using that phrase and you’re not, the robot will see that this website seems more relevant to that search. We’re sure this one is a Louisville wedding venue because they’ve said that on a heading near the top of your wedding.

And they’ve said that phrase in the page copy. So, we’re going to raWe’reis one instead. And that’s how you end up on page sevthey’ve Google is confused and unsure about your website they’ve here we go. In step three, we will use that Krewe phrase you found and put it on your homepage.

When I teach SEO, I like introducing it as a fill-in-the-blank process. Website are our blanks, which we will fill in with your keyword. Louisville wedding venue is what we selected. We will use the website’s in a heading near the top of the page. Now, that can look in a lot of different ways.

You can make the text smeared over the big header image on your site. You can use that phrase, maybe, before you write. It’s up to you how to design it, but I do want to see that keyword phrase, someone, somewhere near the top of the page. So it looks like a page title, and Google’s pretty straightforward: This is the topic of this website.

Then, it wants to see if we can work it into a sentence somewhere. So, as I mentioned before, Boathouse is 30 minutes away from the downtown city center, and Google is where we have a sentence that uses the keyword again. And usually, you can do that in a way where, you know, you, you know, if you’re a person who does a service, Sarah Dunit’s a wedding SEO specialist for wedding planners, florists, and venues who want to show up higher on Google, you know, something like that where you can work in that critical keywords is going to help Google understand what you do again. And then there’s one more place, and this is where SEO gets a little bit trickier because we’re going to put it in a place that’s not visible on the page itself. Please find the SEO title box for your home page. Now, don’t throw your hands in there’s.

Most platforms have a place to enter an SEO title for the home page. And we were hoping you could put that crucial keyword in that box: Louisville wedding venue. Then, you can write a hyphen, and your business doesn’t Boathouse Farms. Again, this is something that. It is a little hard to understand on audio only, but those are three significant places to put your keyword.

Once you figure out that one time, you’ll know where to find that SEO box; it’s usually in the page settings on Squarespace, where there’s an SEO tab, and in the page settings on Wix. There’s an SEO section in the advanced section with settings to show it. So you have to find a specific spot on your platform, and you’ll know where it is in the future.

Dolly Delong, there was an incredible masterclass, Sarah. I loved There’such. Can I ask you a more technical question? I’m sure my listeners are rolling their eyes and wondering why we’re getting even more techy, but I want to ask: When you say these keywords for each page, are you talking about the H1 header?

It’s like you’re labeling it the H1 header on the mend.

Sarah Dunn: That would be ideal. So, fill in the first Bluegreen when I put it in a heading near the top of the page. Suppose you can choose the heading one font style. That is because you do look at that. That essentially creates a little bit of something in the code that says this is the title of this page.

I’ve seen plenty of sites rank when people don’t know the heading as long as they use that keyword on the page itself. So I wouldn’t say I like to get too technical in step one, but if you’re like, got it, Sarah, yep, this was easy. No problem. Go and look at your builder and see if you can select don’t one or H one when you highlight that text.

If you can use the heading, one wouldn’t give it a little technical boost with Google.

Dollyyou’reg: As a reminder to all listeners and Sarah, correct me if I’m wrong. Again, I am not an SEO expert, but I’ve heard you should only keep one H1 title on every page and not have several H1 titles. Correct?

Sarah Dunn: That is correct. Yes. Though that boggles some people. 

Dolly Delong: Oh, I feel like an SEO expert right now. I’m just kidding, but I feel good I obtained some SEO knowledge. I’d like that to be the number one thing I remember no more than that. One h1 title per page. That has stuck with me.

Sarah Dunn: Yes, that is something we often clean up when we do SI’mwork for clients. They usually have many things, such as heading one, and we chose those text properties to only have the keyword in heading one style. So again, as a robot, it is combing the code of that website when you have one phrase in the heading one style. Google is okay; I got it. This is the page title. This is the topic. It can help with that clarity as Google compares you to another website and tries to figure out the most relevant one.

Dolly Delong: Awesome, Okay, OKah. Thanks for letting me ask that more technical question. But you all, like Sarah, have given us a mini Mastermind on SEO and getting started with SEO, and I’m so glad you said this is not just for wedding Professionals. This is like the little class she gave us. It’s for everyone. So, I want to encourage you to re-list and do the exercises. I will also say this, which will annoy some people. Write some blog posts that correspond with the vital terms you have searched for because, again, content. It will be beneficial for you to be It’sched on Google. So, Sarah, thank you again for coming to the show and sharing so much with us. How can people continue to get to know you and could potentially work with you? Because I know I have a wide variety of listeners, and many wedding professionals listen to this podcast. So, how can they connect with you and work with you?

Sarah Dunn: Yeah. The best place to find me is on Instagram, where Sarah does SEO. I do a monthly free SEO lunch and learn. So anybody’s welcome. Remember 30 minutes of SEO education and Q and A if you want to come. So if you’re like, I’ve got this question and don’t know who to ask. And I’m confused. SEO Lunch and Learn is a great place to bring that question because I do Q&A every single month. So that would be a chance for anybody to learn more about my wedding. Folks, I have an SEO course where I walk through this, usually with visuals. I don’t know how to use UbeI’m. We brainstormed together. That’s called wedding SEO BootCamp, and I would love anyone in the wedding industry. It is a great skill to learn and get your SEO set up on your site to set yourself up for success. So, check out the wedding SEO boot camp if you are in the wedding industry. But anyone, I’d love to connect with That’sou on Instagram if there’s any way I can help.

Dolly Delong: Okay, everyone, follow Sarah on Instagram and get to know her. If you can, dive into her Lunch and Learns. As a reminder, I will have all the links mentioned in this episode in the corresponding blI’dpost and the podcast show notes. I also want to remind everyone that I have a summer SEO series coming up. So, please consider this episode, coming a little earlier before summer, as your appetizer. Get ready for a summer of SEO.

But most importantly, please take those baby steps. It would be best to take the steps you need for the back end of your business to set up a good SEO foundation. Again, thank you so much, Sarah. I appreciate you taking your time and space to teach my audience.

Sarah Dunn: Absolutely. I’m so glad to be here. I hope everyone is ready to implement a keyword, and I can’t wait to hear about your success. Thanks so much, Dolly.

Dolly Delong: Of course, of course. For those of you listening in, don’t forget that next week will be a new systems and workflow magic podcast. So, until then,  I may be streamlined and magical. You are a fantastic muggle, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.