144: How to Structure Your Website for SEO: Expert Tips from Michelle Pontvert

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 want to welcome my friend Michelle back. I wrote this in the notes and will say it out loud. My wonderful friend from France is back on the show. Michelle was on episode one for those new to the Systems and Workflow Magic podcast. Oh, seven. So I will be sure to link that in the show notes, and I will have her back on the Showw because she will talk about just how to structure your website for SEO. After all, we’re in the middle of an SEO series this summer. I’m calling it the Summer of SEO.

I want to help you with the back end of your business regarding SEO—building those systems and workflows to structure your business better so that you can be a searchable Answer for your ideal client. So, here’s a little about Michelle, and then we’ll start. Michelle is a life-first business strategist who loves empowering her fellow low-energy, low-capacity entrepreneurs to create businesses that truly fit their real-life circumstances. And I love that because we all don’t fit in that little, like tiny. Box for entrepreneurial or owning a business. We all have our unique life circumstances. And I love that Michelle comes at it with a different strategy. And I love that so much. So she’s also a neurodivergent, multi-passionate entrepreneur who manages two businesses, now one company, while being a hands-on mom and living the expat life in Paris, France. So Michelle, welcome back. And I’m glad to chat with you again.

Michelle Pontvert: Thank you so much for having me back. I loved my first time here, so I’m thrilled to return. I’m super excited to geek out a little bit about SEO because I think it is one of the most life-first approaches to marketing. You do it once, and it works for you, and you don’t have to be so actively on and showing up every day for your business to still work for you. So I’m, yeah, I’m excited to dive in.

Dolly Delong: I’m excited, too. Ironically, Michelle, I was sharing with you before we hit record on this podcast. I did another podcast today interview with another mom who said; I’m not even joking, copy-paste phrase. You just said you can work on these things once you meet SEO. That way, you don’t have to constantly work on it because you want to put your life first. You want to put your family first, and you have life circumstances that come up. So I am so glad you are here and reminding listeners again. These are essential foundational components for your business, and you can work on them once. And then. Leave it after that, or tweet it if you need to. So, um, again, Michelle will share some points on how to structure your website for SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. And then, in the end, Michelle will spill the beans. So, she will offer the SEO edition as a resource for the systems and workflow magic bundle. So, Michelle, I’ll let you take it away. And share with the team.

Michelle Pontvert: I love it. I’ll keep it brief because this is a topic you can go deep on. So, I think the first thing to start with is search engine optimization. SEO sounds confusing and technical, and I think it’s got a bad rap because it is technical by nature. We’re looking at the backend of our websites and using strategic ways of finding Phasing and structuring things to ensure our websites can be found in search engines. So yes, it’s technical, but that doesn’t mean it has to be complicated. And I think that is a big myth in the SEO game that it has to be complex. We need expensive tools. We may need to have people on retainer doing this for us to get any results. And that’s not the case. So one of the first things I would say is if you have a website. You can do SEO for it and optimize it for search engines. So, there are some advantages to different website platforms versus the other. Still, don’t stress about it earlier in business; get a website going. These foundational SEO strategies and practices will follow with you through any other iterations of websites you have; as your website grows, these things will stay with you throughout your journey. So, it’s excellent foundational stuff to know.

Dolly Delong: Awesome.

Michelle Pontvert: So first up, we have the websites. These are, like, digital homes. I like to say these shops we’re putting out there, even if they’re not e-commerce. And it’s our job as a business owner to make those shops as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. And that’s something that Google and other search engines prioritize. And weirdly, When we look at all the technical jargon and all the stuff, it usually comes down to best practices to make a website understandable and usable. So if we can put our sensible goggles on and try and think, how can I make this website as easy to use as user friendly as possible, you’re going to be by nature SEO work, just because you are designing it for humans to be understandable and accessible. What I mean by that is having sections on your website that are easily laid out, each page talking about something specific. Hence, we’re not just repeating ourselves all over the place, each page having a purpose, and then the overall structure of your website making sense. And I’ll dive into that more because I think that’s the critical piece. There are tons more. I’m sure other people will talk about keywords and blogging and all these different things, but I’d like to focus on the structure itself because this is a quick win you can do in a couple of minutes, and it has a huge impact. So, when I’m talking about the structure of our website, I’m talking about how we are. How are we putting different pages together, and how are we linking those different pages so that we can tell Google or other search engines, hey, this is all like one website. This is all interconnected. All these pages are related to each other in this way. And that means that all those pages get each other’s SEO juice. It helps each of those individual pages. And it helps show up better when you’ve optimized one. It shares the goodness with all the other pages on your website but also brings it back to that usability, that understandability. When we’ve got a website that’s well structured, it’s by nature going to work better. The structure is like the pages we choose, where we choose to link those pages, and how we divide them up so that they are understandable. I can keep going, but I will dive into the page structure if that’s okay.

Dolly Delong: Can I ask you a rapid question? Okay, so from your standpoint as a business strategist, Would you recommend a person start with a template or start just designing it there?

Michelle Pontvert: Yeah. I think templates are an excellent way to shortcut at least getting started. And I’m a big proponent of borrowing somebody else’s if it’s not your area of expertise. If you’re not trying to be a web designer, go for a template and use someone else’s expertise. But I would say not all templates are made equal. Once you pick out your website platform—WordPress, Squarespace, whatever—look and ensure that the person who made the template keeps SEO in mind and is intuitively designing things. Hence, they’re not just pretty but also functional. I think we see a lot of templates. Sell yourself on the pretty, which can sometimes lack some of that structural foundation. So that’s just like a little due diligence to do. If you are going to buy a template, make sure it is structured to work for you as in ts of SEO as well. And

Dolly Delong: That is such a good point. Michelle, I am guilty of, well, right now, I don’t want to burn my website down, but like, you know, once a year, I’m just like, Oh, there’s a new template. I want to buy it. And it’s just because it’s pretty. But I already have done the work on the back end for SEO. So it’s working for me, but I always fall into the trap of wanting to buy a new template.

Michelle Pontvert: places for that, you know, there’s. If you’re feeling the design itch, there are places you can have more freedom because they have less impact on your SEO. Let’s say you have just a landing page for a freebie. Maybe that’s not something you’re aiming to get ranked on SEO. So, like, have fun, design away on something like that, but make sure that your core pages, your homepage, your about page, your blogs, your sales pages, like the key things you want people going to, those aren’t the places I would encourage you to like, Go wild with design, keep those really like structurally sound and have fun elsewhere.

Dolly Delong: I love that. Okay, everyone, Michelle permitted us to give a little; we’ll have a little fun, but not on the structurally sound pages, Yes. Okay. I love that. Okay. I just had that little.

Michelle Pontvert: Yeah,

Dolly Delong: No, those listeners were like, okay, what about a template? Okay. But you gave some excellent advice about ensuring the templates you buy have a good SEO structure.

Michelle Pontvert: exactly. We can look for that with the same principles I would follow. We want to ensure they have the main pages we need as a business. As I said, we need a homepage and an about page, and we need sales pages, whatever it is we’re selling. And we might want to look, if you are looking at a template, to make sure it’s got sales pages for the right thing, a sales page selling. A low-ticket digital product will differ significantly from a high-ticket service or a mastermind. We want to ensure we’ve got pages appropriate for what we’re trying to do, and then we want to ensure we’ve got things like our contact page so people know how to contact you. We can add things to our website, like a blog or a podcast. Those are good because they allow you to continue adding Content that is hopefully optimized for search to increase your chances, but I would say those are the key things. And then, I’m just going to give you a little bonus tip: Ensure we have legal pages on our website. This is super important as a business owner, mainly because you’re liable to be legally sound. And it’s your responsibility as a website host to ensure it is sound. Safe for people to operate. So that’s things like your privacy policy and your terms and conditions. They’re not a part of SEO. You’ll probably hide those pages from the search, but it’s an excellent indicator for users when they see them. In the background, I think it does add up to a sound business built with a structurally sound website, too. So it’s not quite SEO, but it is part of it too.

Dolly Delong: I love that. And as a reminder, everyone likes that. It is usually found in the footer of every website page and links to your privacy policy in terms and conditions. Usually, most online business owners use these terms and conditions and privacy policies in a little bundle. Or Online, what do I even call them? Like service providers who act as lawyers for others online. I don’t even know their

Michelle Pontvert: Yeah, there’s like legal templates.

Dolly Delong: Yeah. They’ve created legal templates, and I’m sure my friends are laughing at me because I’m blanking on what. But there are legal pages. For example, I purchased bundles from her, and she paid a one-time fee, and then she helped me, or she had a template to help me create a privacy policy and the terms and conditions. It’s straightforward to do. I’m sure you’ve purchased your versions from other people, too.

Michelle Pontvert: Exactly, yeah, and that is an excellent use of a template, too, by the way. We don’t need to hire a lawyer, and it gets complicated, especially starting. Yeah, it’s all for a strategic template.

Dolly Delong: I will include any templates mentioned in the show notes so you know who to contact. I’ll also include several options so you can do your research and due diligence, as Michelle says. Okay, so we got our. You shared having some structure with the homepage and About page. Specific sales pages, like low-ticket versus high-ticket versus digital products, a blog or a podcast, and legal pages. Are there any other pages I’ve left out?

Michelle Pontvert: Those are the main ones I would encourage you to have. Then, we can be strategic about linking them together. Here, we are talking about your header navigation at the top of your website. Those links are gold. They are so impactful for your business and your SEO because that’s telling Google and your visitors, ” Hey, these are the most critical pages on this website. This is where most people are going to want to go. And we can help improve your chances by being strategic about which pages we decide to include in that. I encourage you to keep navigation as streamlined as possible. It’s so tempting, especially if you’re multi-passionate, to chuck all your links in your navigation; it has a bunch of dropdown menus and has them all there. That starts to make it challenging for somebody to navigate your website. Now they don’t know: Should I look at this page or this page? Do I need to look at this sales page or that one? I look at the blog, so being thoughtful about the links you put in your navigation will be huge. I like to say that the rule of thumb is that if you can keep it to five to seven links in your top navigation, you’re golden. And we can even boost our chances a little bit more by having one of those links be a button. Humans love buttons. We love things that look like buttons. They’re beautiful. They’re eye-catching; whatever link you put in that button position will naturally get the most traffic. So, whatever you want the ultimate goal of your website to be, put that in the button. So, if you want people to go to your shop, set your shop on that button. If you want people to contact you, say you’re a service provider, and you want people to get in touch, put your contact page on that button. And how you decide those five to seven links are already telling Google, Hey, this website, that is for this business, is mainly about these five to seven things. The homepage and the About page tell you more about the company, and then the rest will tell them about the types of offers and the type of information people will find on that website. And that’s it. Boost where those pages will show up when you start ranking. So, a big, easy win is ensuring that the top navigation is super simple and streamlined and that you have just five to seven links. Again, that button position, if you choose to have a button, is like an extra little juicy way to get some more people to that one specific page. And I know a lot of people get tripped up about the homepage. So I’m just going to put a little note in there, the homepage, you don’t have to have. That’s why we have a home listed on your navigation. We’ve understood over the years and years of using websites that if we click on your logo, we know we’re going to go home. So that’s like a quick way to save one spot. So you can put something else in that five to seven link section for

Dolly Delong: I’m bringing this up. There’s this temptation if you’re multi-passionate and want to put 20 tabs, one that’s overwhelming for your user, and they might jump off quickly. So, I will share an example of what I have been going through the year, and this episode will air in 2024. I am dividing my website into two separate websites because listeners if you’re an OG listener, know I am a family photographer. Still, the other hat I wear is a systems and workflow educator for business owners. Who wants to learn about systems and workflows and launching, and I do not serve? Those are two very separate clients, so I kept everything under Dali DeLong’s photography for the longest time. It confused people, even my husband, who likes commenting on me. And I was like, if it’s confusing my husband, I know it’s confusing other people. So, earlier in 2024, I divided both websites, separated them. Was it a lot of hard work? Oh my gosh, it was so much hard work, but I used a template from Show It purchased from a designer who had design and SEO in mind for IU Show It. So, everything Michelle is saying, this designer structured her templates to have precisely what Michelle is saying in mind. So everything connected well. I was able to Separate both businesses, and yes, it was a lot of work, but it was worth it. Now, the user experience makes sense for both sets of clients. And I’m getting more inquiries that make sense now, not confusing inquiries. For example, I want, don’t know, somebody who wants family photography but doesn’t know where to go. They’re like, I thought I didn’t need systems that work fluidly. I want a maternity photographer versus somebody I need to help me with a launch plan. It would be best if you didn’t photograph me doing this, so it’s been fantastic. So, I’m going with this long-winded thought: There is power in structuring your website to like, but it also has excellent SEO capabilities for you and like on the basic level, so it doesn’t confuse your audience. When you are confused, you lose and don’t want to lose your audience early on.

Michelle Pontvert: sure. And I can’t count how many times I’ve said if you have two different people trying to solve two other problems, you have two different websites. It is so common early in business and even quite far into business. I find people who have added an extra layer to their business and tried to grow it into their business, and there always comes a tipping point where it’s just confusing people and needs to separate into its website. It can have its internal logic and feel seamless. Yeah, that’s something I see come up all the time.

Dolly Delong: And you all, like we were sharing, there are perfect templates out there. But going back to Michelle’s point, make sure that these templates have SEO in mind—not just beautiful things, but SEO for the structure.

Michelle Pontvert: And there will be, regardless of what template you get, things you’ll have to do to add to your content to the specifics of your business. That’s where I will make my third layer of your SEO puzzle. Once you’ve got excellent phones, you’ve built your house and got good foundations. Now, we need to make sure it’s specific to your business so that people searching for specifically a baby photographer in your area are notifying you versus all the other types of photographers or other types of companies. And that’s where things like keywords do come in. And I’m sure someone’s going to go deep on keywords, so I’ll try and keep it high level, but keywords are just the words. that we’re typing into Google when you’re searching for something when I’m looking for a cute backpack, I’m going to type in, cute backpack, these colors and look for things. And the things that come up in that search result will show because they have that keyword on the website page or throughout the website itself. So we can be strategic about the words we use on our website to indicate, to search and to humans, That this is what this website is about. And this is what this page is explicitly about. So, if I take my backpack analogy, maybe we’ve got a beautiful little custom backpack brand, and we’ll have leather backpacks as the main thing you want people to find. But we may have ten different styles of different backpacks. So we might have one page we want to focus on small backpacks, And that is the keyword we’re going to be focusing on and trying to Specific page. So when someone types in Google’s small backpack, that page has a better chance of showing up.

Dolly Delong: Gotcha.

Michelle Pontvert: So keywords and how we use them are the other piece. So once we figured out the words, such as the small backpack, we needed to be strategic about where we put those words. We don’t want to shove them everywhere. Reading that website would be very strange from a human perspective. So, we do need to be a bit thoughtful about how we’re structuring it. Google’srioritizing human-focused websites, so we these days don’t have to stress too much. And there are tools to help you make sure you position this right. But I will say the main thing is to ensure you have that in your main heading. So, on a website, we have heading one, like the main one, that tells you what this page is about. It’s also a good idea to include it somewhere else in a heading and a few times in the other pieces of text in the body paragraphs. If you’ve done that naturally, you should be good. There’s no need to stress too much. If you’ve only used it once, I think it’s a perfect opportunity to look and see if you can naturally incorporate that word again. And we don’t have to think too hard about shoving it and making it weird-sounding if we’re talking about, you know, what’s your return policy on this small backpack? That sounds weird. If we’re asking who might be interested in a small backpack, tell them a bit about it. As long as it feels natural, that’s usually a good indicator that you’re on the right side. It can be more technical than that, but I think as a good starting block, picking a keyword for each page you want to focus on that all makes sense under the umbrella of your brand. We need to make sure we’re strategically using that keyword throughout the pages we want it to rank on, in the image descriptions and image names, without repeating ourselves too much at a high level, to give those pages a better shot at showing up in the rankings.

Dolly Delong: And listeners, if you’re wondering, Oh, I want to dig more into keyword research. Well, guess what? I’ve done several episodes this summer about keyword research and how to get started. We even dive deeply into Uber and suggest live podcast episodes. I will be sure to link back to those. Specific episodes, and that way, you can build off of this episode and binge. Listen to the whole series. Well, Michelle, I want to say thank you so much again for sharing. Just like the importance of structuring your website for SEO purposes and keeping it simple and user-friendly, do you mind, as we wrap up, sharing with the listeners what you will be contributing to the Systems and Workflow Magic Bundle, the SEO edition?

Michelle Pontvert: what we’ve been discussing is pretty spot on. So, I have a mini course called SEO Quick Start, and it is just diving into how to do essentially what we’ve just been talking about. How do you structure your website, lay out your pages, and ensure they are all links? It’s tech agnostic. It’s really like the theory behind the theory. Our SEO practice needs a thought process that helps you understand what you’re trying to do. So, if you do end up using tools to help you at least understand what’s happening behind the scenes. And it is for a beginner, knowing nothing knowledge is required about SEO to get started. And I loved seeing how much it empowers people who feel a bit scared about SEO and who’ve avoided it because it felt like a big scary techie thing. I think it’s a great place to demystify the process and get you started because starting is so much better than not starting.

Dolly Delong: Yes. Amen to that, Michelle. So where can people find you, connect with you, and potentially work with you?

Michelle Pontvert: Yeah, so my website is where I have everything I need to know about SEO. I used to be a web designer, and I love a website. I have invested much time and energy in creating many resources on this. So, I have a blog and tons of free and paid offers to help you go deeper into online business from a life-first perspective, so I’m keeping things straight. It is streamlined, simple, easy, and low-lift. You can find that on my website, michellepontvert. com. And then on the internet, I’m the only Michelle Pontvert out there, so I’m pretty easy to find. I’m on the socials at Michelle Pontvert, and that’s usually the best place to find me.

Dolly Delong: Awesome. Again, thank you so much for coming on, Michelle. I’m going to throw a curveball question to you because you are just like, I’m just like, Michelle’s from France. Is she living in France? What’s your favorite thing about living in Paris?

Michelle Pontvert: The food? Like, all of the food. I absolutely cannot get over it. Even though I’ve been here ten years, I can go down the road and buy one of the best baguettes you’ll ever have for less than a dollar. It blows my mind, and I can’t get over it. It’s just the best.

Dolly Delong: I love it. If you’re an OG listener, you all know how much I love you. Specifically, it’s such a niche, and my husband and I love reading World War II books in France. I’m always reading about French history, specifically around that period. When, so I’m always like, what is Michelle up to? What is she doing? What is she? So, you live this very exotic life. I’m like, oh, Paris! I’m sure everybody’s laughing at me, but I’m thankful you could attend the podcast. Thank you again. Thank you for being a part of the bundle. I will make sure to have everything in the show notes so you guys can stay connected with Michelle. And don’t forget to listen to all of these episodes for the Summer of SEO series. It does lead to the Systems and Workflow Magic Bundle, the SEO edition, in August. So I’m excited about it. So stay tuned for August. If you’re listening to this live, it’s coming. If it’s passed, then sorry you missed out on the bundle, but you can listen to all these episodes, get to know us, and take some SEO action for your business. So, until then, I will talk to you all next week about a new systems and workflow-related episode. Thank you for listening to the end. Stay streamlined and magical, you amazing Muggle. I will talk to you all next week. Bye.