137: Having An SEO Roadmap For Your Business with Christy Hunter (The Systems & Workflow Magic Podcast)

Dolly Delong: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems and workflow guide and BFF, Dolly DeLong. Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming back Christy Hunter for a second time to chat about everything in today’s podcast episode. So, if you want to know this, Christy’s first episode with me aired on episode 125. So, feel free to scroll back to 125 and binge-watch her episode because she delivered a lot of juicy details after listening to this episode. SEO related. Christy is also an outstanding, exceptional contributor to the systems and workflow magic bundle, the SEO edition. So, I wanted to feature her again. As a reminder, we are diving into an SEO Theme this summer because I wanted to bring SEO experts who can help guide you and give you more clarity regarding search engine optimization. This is something that we as business owners, whether we are small business owners or a team, need in our business. I wanted us to work on this together this summer; yes, even me; I’m working on my SEO this summer in the series. And then, of course, at the end of the series, I have something extraordinary planned for you all. I’ll go ahead and say it. This is the Systems and Workflow Magic Bundle, the SEO edition. Again, my goal is to help you move the needle of your small business and become a more Googled answer to your ideal client’s search for you on Google. I want you to be more confident with SEO and the power of systems and workflows. So, my very first guest is Christy Hunter. And so, just in case you are new to the Show you’re starting, this is an introduction to Showo, the Systems of Workflow magic podcast. Welcome. So, I’m going to reintroduce who Christy is. After paying for a professional and expensive website redesign that made false SEO promises and moving her wedding photography business clear across the country, Christy quickly and painfully realized the importance of SEO. She then decided to tackle SEO head-on. Ultimately, she found a new passion and challenge that she loved, and she is good at teaching other entrepreneurs. She wants to help them realize their business dreams by increasing their visibility with online searches. So Christy, welcome back to the systems and workflow magic podcast.

Christy Hunter: Thanks, Dolly. I’m glad to be back here again.

Dolly Delong: I’m so excited you’re back. Ironically, this week, the week we’re recording is when your first episode aired. So, at least this week, your episode is Fresh on everyone’s mind, and I’m so excited to have you on. As you know, I don’t do light episodes, Christy. I like to get down to the nitty-gritty in each one. And I know that you want to chat about why it’s so hard for business owners to get started with SEO. So Christy, let’s dive into that topic because I know it’s not a sexy topic but an essential one.

Christy Hunter: you’re right. And it’s so funny that you use the term sexy because I think that is what the struggle is of people starting is because they have to do a lot of unsexy things to ensure that they’re going to have a strong SEO foundation for their business and their website. So, to ensure they have that proper foundation, they have to do those unsexy things rather than More of the sexier type of SEO topics, where they’re doing keyword research, going into their website, changing settings, tracking things, and seeing progress. Before you get to that point, you have to do many things if you don’t want to waste your time and have to redo things.

Dolly Delong: I love that. I know you covered this in episode 125, but if we have brand new listeners, could you reintroduce SEO and give us a definition?

Christy Hunter: Of course. So SEO, like you already said, stands for search engine optimization. And all of that is, if you break that word down, the search engine is just how people are looking for information online. So big one being Google and then like being Yahoo, stuff like that. And then, we have optimization. And all that means is that you’re going through a particular set. Systems and workflows, a specific set of optimization steps to give your website or blog post, whatever piece of content you’re working on, the best chance of performing well on that search engine. When it comes to SEO, performing well is showing up as high up in the search results as possible so that you’re as close to the top. When someone scrolls, looking for information, they see you first. They click on your stuff, start learning from you, fall in love with you, reach out to you to book your service or buy your product, and continuously rely on you to provide them with reliable information.

Dolly Delong: Awesome. Okay. So I know the answer to this question, but I’m mostly just asking this in a way, like in a sly way, to be like, Hey, this is for everyone. But who is SEO for? Is it just for the online business center? Is it for the brick-and-mortar business? Who do you recommend SEO for?

Christy Hunter: That is a great question. So basically, if you have a website and own a business, whether you are a locally-based business or not, you need SEO to get found online, period. Whether you’re someone like me who does more of a service base but works in a vast area, like, I’m comfortable working with anyone in the United States, with no problems there, versus someone like you as a Nashville-based family photographer, you’re trying to target people in your specific area. SEO is still going to be beneficial for you. It’s just that the way you start thinking through different strategies and the optimization you will put in place will be slightly different, but it applies to everybody.

Dolly Delong: I love it. So I set that question up in a very sly way, listeners. So, this episode applies to you. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, like SEO; I’m 100 percent certain that you, as a listener, want to be. Found for your services, no matter what type of business you have. So please listen to this episode. Christie has many great points. She will share them with us and this whole series. Like me, please bookmark this series, binge-listen this entire summer, and apply these points to your business. Slowly, the summer is going to be a fun summer of SEO. So, let’s kick off this series. I know that, Christy, you want to chat about an SEO roadmap. Is that correct?

Christy Hunter: That’s right. That is something extraordinary. As you mentioned, it will be included in our SEO bundle. And so I want to talk about why I created it in the first place.

Dolly Delong: Okay. So let’s chat about that. That sounds like a roadmap; I love the word roadmap in general because it just reminds me of a blueprint or reminds me; here are some general directions on how to get started. So if you, the listener, are like, this is my personality, sometimes I get excited about wanting to do something, but then I look at it and get overwhelmed. I don’t even know where to begin. Consider this a good starting point for dipping your toes into SEO. Don’t allow yourself to get so overwhelmed that you don’t start. So, let’s jump into this roadmap.

Christy Hunter: Well, and I want to say the whole point that you’re making of, you know, this is our SEO summer, like put in the work, get started. SEO takes time. You’re not just going to go in and make some changes on your site. Even if you had this roadmap and implemented everything within 48 hours, you wouldn’t see immediate change. Google must understand all of these changes you’re making to your site. The longer you put this off, the longer it will take for you to start seeing results. That’s why, again, I’ve assembled this roadmap: I don’t want you to have that delay or that fear and anxiety and continue to push it off because I know you have a lot of photographers in your audience. Considering taking care of your SEO over the summer, Consider how that will set up portrait bookings for the fall or wedding inquiries when engagement season begins. That could be a dramatic difference from one year to the other versus if you’re just like, Oh, well, I’ll wait until it’s slow. I’ll wait until this. I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait. And then you’re just never going to start to move forward.

Dolly Delong: Exactly, exactly. You’ll mostly be doing, I don’t know. I like to call it, in my mind, your reactionary marketing, and not strategic marketing, not looking ahead, but instead just reacting. Every single day. Out of panic, out of fear. So, we want to move past any panic and anxiety from your marketing and help you lay a good foundation. Part of that foundation is SEO. All right. I know my listeners are screaming at me; they’re like, Dolly, let’s talk about the roadmap. Okay, guys. Okay. But I want to lay a good foundation for you. Okay, yeah, let’s chat about this roadmap, Christy.

Christy Hunter: Of course. So when it came to making the roadmap, you would have probably laughed if you saw how many times I went into this thing and I moved one step up a position and swapped it with another one or took an entire section and said, no, this needs to come before this one. The whole reason that I have this roadmap and the way that I made this checklist is because there are some things that you need to think about or make decisions about. Before you start implementing other tasks, and so the way this roadmap is organized, is it taking you from this essential step of, okay, have I set up Google search console? Do I have a website that I like? I know that sounds like such a silly question and such a random thing to put on a checklist, but I worked with someone, and I felt so bad for her because I felt like maybe I should have asked her. This question, but she was diving into education. She was going through my course, and naturally, when she was learning, she was like, Oh, I’m so excited. Let me start implementing everything that I’m learning. And then, about two to three weeks into working on our site, she’s, you know what? I want an entirely new website. I don’t like my website anymore. And it was just.

Dolly Delong: me out.

Christy Hunter: I was, yes. I was so excited for her to be making these investments and significant shifts in her business, and her site did need a refresh, but I didn’t feel like it was my place to say it was a decision she needed to make for herself. But she did much more work because she had to SEO Twodo by two sites. After all, she did it for her current site. Then she did a whole redesign, which is, as you know, a whole thing in itself. Then, she had to go through and re-implement things. So I even have something as simple as Do you like your website? Because if you don’t, please fix it before you start putting in all of these changes

Dolly Delong: Gotcha. And when you say, do you like your website, do you mean website host-like? Show it versus Wix versus Squarespace versus WordPress. Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Are you talking about that? Are you talking about the design?

Christy Hunter: I would say both. So, maybe you feel like you’ve been locked into a platform; perhaps you got an excellent rate, like when they were first inputting the whole process of hosting a website with them. You feel like, I really can’t beat this price, but I feel limited on how I want to design and change things, or every time I go into it, it just stresses me out, and I can’t figure anything out, and it takes me forever to do something. Then that’s a problem. You don’t want to spend time refreshing your website design, look, and feel on doing all of this SEO work if you don’t enjoy even the platform you’re using. So it’s a twofold question. I love that you brought that up because you don’t want to spend time. I’m not going to spend hours and hours; I mean days, weeks, recreating a website on a platform that you don’t even like. If you’re going to put in the work of creating a new website, you might as well shift to a different platform if you’re not happy with what you have. Or maybe the platform that you’re currently using is just a little bit limited when it comes to What I call SEO friendliness; maybe it’s missing specific settings and options that aren’t there for you that you want to implement and you just can’t because that platform, that’s jot something that they’re focused on using. So, from an SEO perspective, it gets tricky if you’re changing platforms, have good SEO, and are switching to a different platform. You’ve got to be careful about a lot of other things. However, suppose you’ve never put SEO into place, and you, your rankings, and you’re entirely invisible. In that case, you have a lot of flexibility when making a significant shift. You don’t necessarily have to be as cautious. Right.

Dolly Delong: Advocate. I don’t think this is the devil’s advocate. I don’t know what phrase to use, but I will ask this question because I know my listeners are okay. For example, when I’m stuck, what if I need a new website? How long should they give themselves to overcome? That question alone can cause a person not to move. Do they either take a year? Analytic paralysis is a real thing that many people struggle with when deciding on a template or analysis. And you assume I have to perfect every step before I move to the next thing. And so what do you norma-usually your clients, Christie, when they’re stuck at that point? How fast of an action should they take to get okay? I’m going with Show It, or I’m going with Wix, or whatever. What do you usually advise your clients to do?

Christy Hunter: It depends. If they’re already in communication with me and we’re ready to start working, then I know that SEO on their website and online presence is essential to them. So, that needs to be the priority before they move on and do anything else. Sometimes, if they do a mentorship program with me, they’ll go through education first. First, before I start doing physical, tangible work on their website, we can allow them to work on their site while they’re going through the course and getting their education before we start that nitty-gritty, dirty work on their current website. But it all depends again on what your capabilities are and what your time looks like. So, I know that when I was transitioning again, I was taking on SEO and putting my photography on the back burner while my husband and I relocated again. I’ve moved my business twice now; this is our last move before he retires. So, I decided to use Photography with SEO when we were transitioning again. And he ended up having to go out of the country for a week and a half. I was in a hotel room with me and a cat. And my laptop, and that was it. And I built, I built my entire website. Yeah. I’ve built my whole website within a week. Like it was done, but that’s all I was doing. And that’s all that I had going on. And I was still usinShowow It. I had to Show It for my wedding photography platform and SEO website. And so, I was very comfortable with the platform. But that’s all I was doing. I hadn’t even had any; we weren’t even living in a house. I felt like I had nothing else to do. But if you are changing to a different platform, maybe you’re a little bit slower to catch on to technology changes and shifts, and you have a full-time job, or you’re running your full-fledged business while also trying to do this. Maybe you can outsource and find a template to get the point. There are all sorts of shortcuts that aren’t shortcuts, just ways to help you with that timeframe. But if SEO is essential to you and you aren’t happy with your current site, then working on a new website design, whether it’s moving to a new platform or staying on the platform that you are on, should take precedence first because there’s no point in you doing anything on your current site if you’re not happy with it.

Dolly Delong: That’s good advice right there. And I would also say if I could chime in, listeners, give yourself like a set period to make that decision, like maybe a week to research, like the there are two platforms that you are toying with, because I also know if I can get into your minds for a second, you get on. Facebook groups, you ask questions, and everybody has their opinion. And then you’re like, Oh if I go with this, I’m wrong according to this person. And then, if I do this, I am wrong according to this person. Okay. So, give yourself one week to emotionally filter through all the comments and suggestions and see what works best for you and your business. Also, you may pivot and change a year from now, two years from now, or three years from now. Just know that change is inevitable. It will happen. But don’t make any moves, okay? Give yourself one week, decide, and then move forward. If a change needs to happen, it must happen, and that’s okay. That’s okay.

Christy Hunter: Yeah. As you already alluded to, done is better than perfect. I created my website from scratch, and I don’t know how often I had to go in there and be like, Oh, I forgot to central line this text block. Oops. Go in and fix a blog template or something. You’ll find things you must fix, and that’s okay. The critical part is getting that website foundation in place so that you can start implementing SEO.

Dolly Delong: Okay. I know we were on like 0. 1 forever. So, we started with the roadmap and this checklist of essential things. If you’re like, I’m ready to implement SEO in my business. We spoke about the importance of this website. Is this right for me, or do I want to change anything? Okay. What other questions do you want people to ask themselves as they go through this checklist? Um,

Christy Hunter: Well, some, most of the checklist is very tangible in terms of going to your website and doing X step, or maybe it’s collecting new brand images for yourself. Perhaps you need to update those while you’re in this process or Locate them on your computer. Maybe you need to instill better file naming systems. You are putting in good alt text for those images. But for you to be able to go into your website and put in the alt text, you have to have the photos in the first place. So, I even have a step in there that gathers all of your images together. Because that’s just one thing that if you don’t think about that ahead of time, and you’re just trying to run right into it, You’re not going to have it ready, and then you’re going to feel like you’re floundering trying to pull from all these different spaces. So it’s really about making sure that everything you’re doing is going step by step in a way that makes sense and setting yourself up for success. So there are things that are more like What are your business goals? Where do you want to be found? Do you know what specialty you want to be found for or what location? Suppose you are like someone who has a locally based business. In that case, you have to make those decisions for yourself before going and doing keyword research because you might be super excited to use a new tool and start looking at data and metrics and competition and all this kind of stuff and feel like, Oh yeah, this is what I’m going to go after. But if you can’t decide if you want to work in your city or are okay with working in a larger city an hour away, you can’t proceed with keyword research. So there’s a lot of technical stuff in that roadmap for you to check off, but I have things thrown in there that are very much so. What are my actual personal and business goals? Because a lot of that is significant to your overall SEO decisions and implementations.

Dolly Delong: Let me ask you this question, Christy. Do you give examples or tangible examples of how to do each step? Does that make sense?

Christy Hunter: The roadmap is more of a concise DIY checklist. I just tried to pare down everything I teach within the SEO basics course and put it into an action plan. So if you feel like you have minimal SEO knowledge and you’re hearing things like alt text and file naming and keywords and heading tags and page titles and meta descriptions and all of that is complete gibberish to you, you need to make sure you have some basic. I need educational or SEO knowledge to implement that stuff because otherwise, the roadmap will seem like crazy words to you. It won’t make sense, but if you feel like it, do you know what? I have a pretty good understanding of SEO. I might not be a pro, but I understand the different things that you’re talking about. The checklist is still organized to allow you to take action. But suppose you are a complete newbie and very unfamiliar with anything. In that case, I recommend at least doing some education, whether it’s a course or your kind of research. I created a blog post on my website devoted to basic SEO terms for people very new to the SEO world. And all of that kind of sounds like gibberish to them. I have a definition and a standard plain language explanation, but I also have examples that accompany all of that. So you have pictures, written text, all that kind of stuff. So that is like a very. This is a convenient, free resource for anyone who needs the roadmap. I want to start, but I feel uncertain about what things mean. That’s a free blog post on my website. You don’t have to pay for it, and you don’t have to be a member to access it. It will help better explain terms you might run into while working through the roadmap.

Dolly Delong: Perfect.  I was thinking about this, too, Christy. Once a person decides, okay, I know exactly what website I will use. I’m very confident that if there are terms they don’t understand and are trying to apply to their specific website, they can easily Google how and where to put meta descriptions. How will it be on the website, and how will those articles be generated?  I’ve used Wix and Squarespace, and now I’m using Show It.  Google is incredible.  It has the best. Know exactly what articles to put up. Nd so that helped me in my early days of foundational SEO. I searched Google, and of course, like I did a lot, I did one specific course that helped skyrocket my SEO to show it. Till, I highly recommend just the basics, like Googling; if you’re wondering where to put your meta description, Google, where do I put my meta description?  I have a Wix website that will showcase what you need to do.

Christy Hunter: exactly.  Each website platform has dozens to hundreds of articles about everything you can think of. Hey, all have some customer support, but if they can create an optimized library of content online to help their customers, throw it off. Nd, so that helps save them some legwork in the end. But if they had created all that content and didn’t put good SEO into place, you probably wouldn’t have found a helpful article to show it when you went into Google to look off. You would have seen.  A help article from someone who does show at SEO or something like that is trying to provide you recommendations, but because they’re on top of it and know what they’re doing, they’re a trusted resource because they are the platform.  You’re going to see a lot of those things pop up. I will talk about that using different terms. Hen I’m explaining what to do, I’m like, if you need to see, because I, in my course, have screen recordings of me doing that. Very optimization step within multiple platforms so that you

Dolly Delong: I  love that.

Christy Hunter: But if you haven’t done that, if you haven’t invested in the course, and you’re just looking for that quick DIY route, go to Google, type it in, and your website platform will show you examples and step-by-step instructions.

Dolly Delong: I was trying to make the point that you could also do it alongside your roadmap.  If you’re uncertain about specific terms you’re using, in addition to that free blog resource you mentioned, you can Google it.  I keep returning to meta description, but let’s say alt text.  how, do I create alt text for my Squarespace, Show It, or Wix images?  You can use these three resources to help you specifically with your website.  This is like Christie,, and I am am trying to break down a small strategy session for you and make SEO tangible forfor you. Kay.  Is there anything else you want to discuss regarding your SEO roadmap?

Christy Hunter: For the roadmap, when you’re talking about keeping things simple, it is checklist-style, but it’s not like every checkpoint has a paragraph of text. I was very particular about how I wrote it, trying to make sure that things are concise so that you aren’t trying to read through five, six, and twenty pages of okay; this is what I need to do for my SEO. It’s a two-page condensed PDF. The descriptions for each step are detailed but concise. I want to get straight to this point, which is what you need to do to see the progress you’re after: Complete this step, complete it, and move on to the next one.

Another thing to consider is that the roadmap is simplistic in detail and descriptive. I’m not being elusive in terms of what I’m referring to. I’m ensuring you know what I’m discussing in each step. Still, I’m also trying to ensure you can move through things quickly and concisely while focusing on the most important.  o this is the advice that I give to every single person that I work with when they think about doing SEO for their website: They immediately have this idea that I need to go into every single page and blog post that I’ve ever written and do all of these steps for every single thing. The hat is overwhelming. Don’t care if

Dolly Delong: very overwhelming.  e,

Christy Hunter: you are to go through the process.  It is a very overwhelming thought.   I recommend always starting with your most important pages and posts first.  For example, for you, that would probably be your homepage.  t would be whatever service pages you have created, or if you are someone who sells products, whatever your top selling products are, the ones that you want people to find online, you want to start with those that are very SEO intense. Ages first and then move on to other pieces of content where you’re like, it would be great if someone found me for this online, but it’s not my bread and butter.  It’s not what my primary focus is. Hen, you can start cleaning up everything all together, but don’t feel like, okay, I need to write page titles for all 100 blog posts.  and 15 pages that I have created on my website platform. We can’t, but start with your most important ones. First, you should list the things you want people to find online. Tart with those, and then you can go back and clean everything else up, maybe during that slower winter period. But when you want to start and see that traction, you need to consider your most important pages and posts before tackling your entire website.

Dolly Delong: I’m sure there’s somebody that’s, but Christy, everything’s essential. Do want to second what Christy is saying. Y you can start with the very basics. What is your bread and butter? I’m going to share this with everyone. I know not everyone knows this about me, or you might; I am a. I am a Nashville-based family photographer, in addition to being a systems and workflow educator. I was coming to a point this year when we were recording 2024, and I realized that my website was serving. They are very different audiences. And it wasn’t clear to people landing on my website. People visited my website for family photography and then read systems and workflow education. They’re like, what? I need a family photographer. It isn’t apparent. C ick off. O, if a person was coming to my website from a podcast or YouTube, and they’re like, Photography. I didn’t need to learn about photography, and I didn’t know how to automate the back end of my business. It is so confusing. I started separating my websites, like Photography Systems and Workflow Magic. And now they’re completely separated. They’re two different entities. No, it’s less confusing for my two clients, but like Christie, going back to the point of everything seems so important. I want to be searched for everything. And so going back, okay, what are my bread and butter? For me, the bread and butter is family photography. The majority of my income comes from that. The second part of that income comes from systems and workflow education. But I had to realize it, okay? Once I separated them, I needed to prioritize what I needed to put on the back burner versus what I could create a system for once a week, just like a routine for myself to update, like a page or a blog post. I think Christie is trying to share with us that once you’ve prioritized what’s essential, develop a weekly routine for yourself to go in and clean up any blog posts or pages that need to be optimized. Your bread and butter, like what you’re known for and making money for, shouldn’t take the back burner. You still need to be making money; you still need to be serving your clients. And so what I’ve been doing, with this example, is just like taking an Or two a week now and updating certain pages on both websites. I’m trying to lay a good SEO foundation first and then add to that. And it’s. Cristie said at the beginning that SEO is a slow and steady game. Y, you’re laying the foundation, and then it’s not going to be an immediate return like it’s not like somebody who’s going to Google tomorrow. O, systems and workflow. I like it, and I’m going to get a million hits. T at’s. Maybe that’d be cool, but really, what would be better is if I just laid a good foundation and built on top of that in, I know, a year from now, like I, I will see the fruits of my labor happen.

Christy Hunter: And I must admit, my, my SEO nerdy self was very excited when I learned that you were separating your websites because when you said it’s confusing for people that are coming to your site if it’s confusing for a person. I am not a very obvious robot. By separating those, you will make your SEO intentionality clear between those two websites. I am so proud of you for taking that stuff because, as you mentioned, it is a big undertaking. There’s a lot to do, but you’re already putting systems and workflows in place to make that steady and progressive. L’s progress on your SEO instead of feeling like I can sit down and do it all or can’t do any of it. S  that’s a massive step in the right direction.

The significant part of a lot of the work that you’re doing and a lot of what is included in this roadmap is that once you have put the majority of this into place, you do Have to go back and constantly change page titles and update meta descriptions because you’re not going to be changing what that page or post is about. I’m going to be staying about the same. S  once you have started implementing many of these things, set it and forget it. Most will be one-and-done if you begin making more considerable shifts and changes in your business. A d then you don’t; it’s not on your to-do list anymore, but as you create new pages on your website, as you create new blog posts, and you know about all of these steps in your roadmap, you can pull up your roadmap and have it right in front of you. It’s also an excellent tutorial because I’m ready to create a new blog post or page on my website. What do I need to make sure that I do?

It’s a great checklist for you to follow page by page, and you’ll build these great SEO habits and naturally put all of that into place as you go. However, it takes time for Google to understand changes. It takes time for you to remember what you must do. Eventually, you’ll get the hang of things once you have worked through that roadmap enough times and on enough pages. It will be so funny when I write a blog post because I almost test myself. I sit there and write whatever I need to do. I did my research beforehand. And then, at the very end, I go to hit publish, and I have green lights from Yoast SEO. I  used to be that I would write a post, and then I would be like, okay, I have one red light and one orange light. What am I doing? What do I need to go back and fix it? Because it’s all ingrained in there, I can lay out an entire post, and all of it is naturally happening. Then, when I hit publish, I don’t have to go back and fix anything because I have worked through that roadmap enough times to know what needs to be done from the beginning.

Dolly Delong: I love that so much. W at a great reminder, everyone. Cristy, I’m happy you returned because this is just a good reminder. It takes time, and I like using the analogy of working out. If you can’t go to the gym, expect a six-pack daily. It takes time, or you can expect yourself to run a 10-minute mile if you have never run before and have never run a mile before. I don’t know.

Christy Hunter: I’ll never be able to do that. I get shin splits almost instantly if I start to run like I am not a runner.

Dolly Delong: Oh man, but it’s just like any analogy. You can’t expect to be perfect on your first try. You have to keep trying. Y you can monitor your progress over time and see the fruits of your labor. O oh, here’s another analogy. Y, you all hate me. I know somebody’s hating on me from the other side of this, and they’re like, please stop with the analogies. If you don’t like working out, if you don’t like, If you like gardening, here you go. Y you can’t expect to have a perfect day. G rden, like it takes time. You have to lay a good foundation, like good soil. I don’t know any analogies with gardening. I’m sure somebody is screaming at me, but it takes time and years to hone that skill like a good garden. S, give yourself lots of grace with SEO.

Christy Hunter: And I even have a step on the roadmap that says, okay, have you gone back into your website and made many changes? This is what you need to do to let Google know that you made all these changes. T at’s even in your roadmap. And then you have to, as you said, give it time to see those results start to come forward. But I’m very excited for you. I hope you’ve set up a Google search console on both websites and can start seeing how things will shift. I’m sure you will see significant differences in the keywords that Google is trying to rank you for and get a better understanding of your site. B building up links and things like that to your different websites or getting people to change them over, even things like creating a backlink profile, developing a linking strategy, looking at your competition, and seeing what they’re doing—all of that is laid out for you in the roadmap. S, while it may not be exciting, it is there to put those thoughts into your brain and help you figure out; okay, this is something I need to think about before I hit publish.

Dolly Delong: These are all great points. I can’t wait to get my hands on these roadmaps. S, Christy, how can I get my hands on this roadmap?

Christy Hunter: as you already alluded, we’ve got a special SEO bundle coming out soon this summer. S  that will be available within the bundle. I m contributing two different items to the bundle. S, we have the roadmap. And then, for those who were thinking, as Christie said, it’s just a checklist. I might need some basic understanding. I’m also including module one, the entire module from the SEO basics course. I have a course to walk you through the basic knowledge of SEO and what things are. S  you’re going to have both of those things together within the SEO bundle that Dolly is putting together to help you understand the foundation and then be able to move forward. N w, if you are late to the game, maybe you’re like me, and you have. I think I looked this morning; I have 170 episodes in my podcast queue. I have an outrageous amount of episodes in there of things that I need to because I’ll stumble upon a new podcast, and I will add 30 to 50 episodes from that podcast, and then I’m trying to play catch up. So, if you are late to the game and missed out on Dolly’s bundle, which I sure hope you didn’t, but if you did, it’s also available in my shop. However, you’re only going to be able to get it for such a low price within Dolly’s SEO bundle.

Dolly Delong: Yeah, and you all, this is going to be a, like II said, the summer of SEO, and don’t just make it to 2024the year of SEO like every year; I want It to be a goal of yours to create like constant systems, like refining your SOP standard operating procedures with how you implement SEO. My goal for you this summer is to start taking steps to lay a foundation for SEO. Hopefully, after August, you’ll have all the steps and tools you need to optimize your website, whether you’re an online business owner, a service-based business owner, or you like to sell. You are a maker. I hope you will join us this summer in the series so that you can have a good foundation laid out. You can follow all the contributors, especially getting to know them through the summer and learning more about their businesses. This leads me to my next question, Christy: How can people find you? Connect with you and work with you. 

Christy Hunter: This is going to be my website. I use SEO; I’ve got to have that bad boy in place and ready to go. S  you can find me at SEO coaching for creatives. c m. Not only can you contact me there, but I am also very transparent. M  services, what they include, and the price point for every service I offer. It’s all available on my website besides the courses, the road map, and everything else. S  you’ve got options in terms of education. We have one-on-one options to work together, and then I have the mentorship program, Which is probably my most popular option because we can Get the education. We have a call together to ensure you understand the education that just happened. A lot of the time, people also like to hold on. I need to change some stuff on my website. We have our audits, where we work together and go through those things. We have all that information available, and you can find it online. Like I told Dolly and mentioned earlier, everything is new from a social media standpoint. I was doing my wedding photography business for so long and just helping with SEO on the side before I kicked things into gear there. However, I have been posting regularly once a week on my social media account. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook again, still at SEO coaching for creatives. I would also like to post helpful tips in their action items for you, along with some of those questions to ask yourself before you start implementing SEO so that you don’t waste a ton of time. You’ll also find those kinds of shortcut questions in the SEO roadmap.

Dolly Delong: I’m so excited, Christy. Thank you again for coming to the show. For lisShowrs, please listen to episode 125 because Christy’s episode was terrific. Christy, thank you so much again. 

Christy Hunter: Of course, thanks for having me, Dolly. I can’t wait to see what happens within the SEO bundle, follow along with this podcast series, and see what other SEO education I can get my hands on.

Dolly Delong: Of course. For those who want to join the waitlist, I ensured that the systems and workflow magic bundle, the SEO edition, also has a link in the show notes. S  you can get on the waitlist and get all the juicy details. So, some surprises are coming this summer. I’ll know about the surprises if you’re on the waitlist, so I’m excited. Until then, have a streamlined and magical week, you amazing muggle. We will come to you next week with a whole new systems and workflow-related podcast episode, all centered around SEO. S  until then, bye.