171 | How Clients Find You! Part 1 of SEO for Organizers with Julia Renee Consulting

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Written By Melissa Klug

The #1 question I get as a coach for organizers is, "How can clients find me?" SEO is one answer to this question! This is a 2 part series with an expert for professional organizers, Julia of Julia Renee Consulting--and it is FULLLLL of gems for you! 

Julia is an SEO and Pinterest Consultant for creative small businesses at Julia Renee Consulting and is the first SEO professor at Drexel University. Her goal is to make SEO and Pinterest strategies approachable and easy to implement for all small businesses so they can reach their ideal clients organically. She lives in Philadelphia with her Siberian Husky sidekick, her husband, and her baby daughter, and on the side, she runs a travel photography site and experiments with spicy recipes in the kitchen.

Julia offers both set and custom SEO packages to help home organizers rank higher on Google. She focuses on creating strong SEO foundations, and she does a variety of services, from keyword research and website copy optimization to fixing technical errors and creating data reports. Julia's goal is to help make SEO approachable for small businesses, so she's always happy to answer questions and give guidance throughout the process of working with her.

You can listen here, read the full transcript below, or find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you love to listen to podcasts!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

 Hey pro organizers. It's Melissa. And listen, if you are listening to these in real time, it is a podcast palooza for you. You're getting three podcasts this week. In case you missed it. I put up a podcast about your December to dos. There is a lots of stuff in there, including some really important messages about protecting your digital assets.  We have had a couple people that I know who have recently gotten hacked, and it's really been a situation. So please listen to that. If you get a chance, you can listen to it, sped up if you want to. Although I talk pretty fast, so. Maybe don't do that, but, um, there's some really good tips in there that you can listen to. 

So part of that episode was that I want to make sure that you are using December to its fullest advantage, first of all, for rest and relaxation. But secondly, to get some things shored up in your business to get you ready for 2024, 1 of those things that I'm super passionate about is SEO. 

And what I wanted to do is have an SEO expert who works with organizers specifically. And small businesses to come on and explain a little bit about SEO. It's something that really stresses people out sometimes, and it can be very complex and she has done an absolutely amazing job distilling it down. 

So I'm dividing this into two episodes. You're going to get an episode today and then you're going to get an episode tomorrow. We covered it all you guys. We have covered SEO basics. We've covered Google search console. We've covered how to use Pinterest. All sorts of things in this. It's a super, super great conversation with Julia of Julia Renee consulting. Lots of organizers. 

I know use her and love her for SEO. And then hit the show notes. I will have all of her information

and as always. if there's anything you're missing, you can hit up proorganizerstudio.com/links. 

Or you can feel free to email me. hello@proorganizerstudio.com. All right. I will see you tomorrow with another podcast podcast palooza, I guess it's your early holiday gift this week.

Melissa: So anybody who has listened to this podcast for four seconds knows that I am very, very big on making sure that all of your digital properties are ready to go.

And it's an absolutely amazing way. It is not social media. That is not how we get clients. It is mostly from the internet. I am super, super passionate about organizers, making sure That their website and all of their online properties are operating. And so I would like to introduce you to my new friend, Julia, who is here, who I think shares my same passion.

Is that fair?

Julia Renee: Oh yeah, definitely. 

Melissa: perfect. But we are going to be talking about something that I have frequently said, like you could get a PhD and SEO, and it is a very, very complex subject, but I also. Believe deep in my heart that for professional organizers, SEO does not have to be this mystical, magical, scary thing.

So Julia, welcome to the podcast.

Julia Renee: Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

Melissa: You are an SEO expert, right? Like you help people, normal people like me with SEO. So can you tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got there and your journey?

Julia Renee: Yeah. So my journey has definitely been all over the place. But I've been doing this full time for a little over six years now.

I started off as just your basic freelancer. I didn't even have a website. I don't like to tell people that now. That's hilarious. I know. It's a dirty secret. Yes. So I didn't have a website probably for at least like eight months. But that's because I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I was just taking on whatever freelance work that I could, I was doing like graphic design for an opera company.

Like. All over the place. But a lot of what I was doing was content writing for small businesses. And I had a blog of my own, so not a business website but I'd learned how to do SEO and other marketing. So I knew how to get blog posts to rank well on Google. So when I was writing these blog posts for small businesses, they were ranking really well.

And then I realized they had no idea what I was doing to help them rank higher. So that's when I started focusing more on SEO and I got my own website. 

Melissa: Awesome. Great job. 

Julia Renee: That does rank pretty well. So I've been doing this full time for about six years. Yeah. Helping businesses rank higher on Google.

The other side of my business is also doing Pinterest, which is a search engine in itself. So I really focus on search engines. Like you mentioned that I don't, I don't love social media. I do hang out on Instagram, mostly just sharing. Photos of like my dog and my baby on Instagram stories but just to kind of have that presence and actually it's kind of funny, I do get some clients from Instagram, but not because they follow me, it's because they like search on Instagram, and then they find my profile that way.

So even Instagram SEO can be beneficial. 

Melissa: There are so many things that I want to get to, but let's just talk about that one for a second before I forget it, because this is one thing that it's not necessarily what you post on social media, it is what you have in your profile, and you have a very short amount of characters that you can use, But what I see all the time are organizers that don't have their location in their Instagram, or they don't really have what they do, that's another place that you can do SEO that's like a sneakier 

Julia Renee: place.

Yeah. And I mean, exactly what you're saying is problems that I see on websites all the time where they don't have their location, so they don't get to the point of what they do. I see a lot of times starting out with the fluffy language. Like, I can help you feel more confident about your life or, feel, less stress or something like that, but they don't actually say what they do.

So feeling less stressed, that could be. A whole myriad of different services that could be a yoga studio, so got to get to the point right away. You can add in the fluffy language afterwards and, really try to connect with someone on an emotional level, but you got to get straight to the point first.

Yeah. 

Melissa: The phrase that I have a personal pet peeve about is people who talk about like, I'm going to curate a beautiful home experience for you. No, no, no, no, no, no. Like we. Our professional organizers, we declutter and organize people's homes. Like you have to be clear about what you say, but that's a point of SEO, right?

SEO loves very clear language about what you do and trying to fluff it up. We think sometimes that is what is going to make us look professional and stand out. But in reality, that plain language is really what connects with our clients. Is that fair? 

Julia Renee: Oh, yeah, definitely. Especially if they're not, super clear on exactly how you can help them or what you do.

Like, I mean, for me, for SEO, It's a mystery for a lot of people. So I get right to the point. I tell them, SEO consultant for small businesses. I help them rank higher on Google, right? And then they get the gist. And then I can go into details of exactly how I get there. But How the magic happens.

Melissa: Well, what are some things, some common things we've talked about a couple of them, but what are some common things that you see, particularly with professional organizers or other service businesses like what we do that are mistakes that people make? 

Julia Renee: So I see this for all local businesses.

But , not having their location in near the top of the page. And also you do want to make sure you're incorporating it a couple of times throughout your website copy. So if you only have it in your footer Google reads just like a human from top to bottom. So if they don't know where you're located and then your audience doesn't know where you're located until they get to the very bottom of the page they might have already left your website by then if they're not clear on.

If you're in their local area, so definitely making sure that you're including your location, exactly what you do, professional organizing and then you can definitely add in the, the fluffy language later, but get right to the point. And then one other thing that I see a lot with organizers is.

Especially for ones who offer a couple different types of services. So I've seen some that do home organizing and interior design or home organizing and like corporate office organizing is they only have one page that has all of their services on there. Whereas if you of separate those out, especially if they're for different types of audiences.

So You know, a mom who wants her playroom organized is not the same audience as, a corporate office who wants their, like, workroom organized or something. Separating those out so you can speak to those different audiences, and then also be able to rank for both of those services separately. So if someone is searching specifically for corporate office organizing, but you have 10 different services listed on one page, it's going to be really hard for that one page to be able to rank for all these different types of services.

Melissa: Okay, this is interesting because I have never really thought about that because most of us, including myself, have all of our services kind of on one page because we go like, oh, well, we want everyone to be able to see all the things we do. So that's interesting. So is there a value in having one page that has all the services and then doing separate pages for each individual one or would you recommend doing them totally separate?

Julia Renee: I think it depends on how many services you have and how different they are, but I, I definitely see clients that I've worked with who have all of their services on one page, just have a little snippet of information for each service. And then they have a link that, goes to that separate page.

And you don't, if you have 10 different services, you don't have to have 10 different pages. You can definitely group ones together that are similar, but they, if they are very different, like one client I've worked with. She has a separate page for like architects. library organizing, which is super different from like closet home organizing.

So she needs a separate page for that, but if you, specialize in, home organizing, but you know, particular rooms or something like that you can definitely keep those rooms on one page under home organizing. You don't have to have a separate. Page for kitchen organizing and one for garage organizing or something like that, 

Melissa: but we do have people. And one of the things that I will tell people is diversifying your services is a great idea. And especially if you have particular passions for things, but I'm just thinking now too, as we go into the holidays, there are a lot of services that organizers can offer that are, holiday specific or but they're not necessarily organizing.

So that's a good tip to kind of separate those things out a little bit, not confuse. Not confuse the Google machine.

Julia Renee: Yeah. Yeah. If you're doing like holiday decor or something like that, that's, yeah, that's going to be a different keyword than your typical home organizing keywords. Right. 

Melissa: Can we talk a little bit about keywords?

Because I think that's where and even. Like I'm thinking more of myself, like I'm decently comfortable with some of this, but when you start talking about keywords and finding keywords and how to rank for keywords, and you start to get like a little ookie, it starts to be like a little at it.

So can you just explain simply what are keywords, how do we find them? All that good stuff. 

Julia Renee: Yeah, so keywords, it's literally what you type into Google when you want to find something. The phrase keyword is a little misleading because it makes it sound like there's just one word, but it can be a whole phrase.

So professional organizer in Houston, that is it. That's a keyword. So there are lots of different keyword research tools where you can find. These different keywords, they'll show you information on like what the monthly search volume is and how competitive these keywords are so that we can see kind of like the best keywords that you should be targeting or like even the best phrasing of some keywords.

So for example, like home organizer versus professional organizer, there is typically a difference I find in how many monthly searches there are for those keywords. And then also if you are serving like. Locations that are, kind of large. If you want to, if you're like, for example, in Washington, D.

C. That's a huge area. So if you, you can kind of compare like Washington, D. C. versus like Northern Virginia versus like small or, quote small towns in Northern Virginia. And things like that. I'm located in Philadelphia. So Philadelphia is huge. You can try to compare searches for like Philadelphia or there's an area called the main line.

So just trying to, figure out first of all, where you want to be working is if you, want to work in DC and you don't want to have to drive into Northern Virginia all the time then, make sure you're targeting Washington DC and not Northern Virginia, but just kind of comparing to see what is getting the most searches and also what is the least competitive keywords that you can target.

So that way you do have an opportunity to rank well for them. 

Melissa: But just going back to the basics again, using that simple language about what it is we do, you can have some of those complex keywords, right? Like where you could rank for something that is very specific to a niche or something like that, but also not forgetting We've got to have some of the basics covered too, with professional organizer, professional home organizer, home organizer.

It's about what people search 

Julia Renee: for. Yeah. And there is also the search intent that you kind of need to pay attention to, because there is actually a big difference between. Home organizer and home organizing. If someone is searching for home organizing, that could be, they're just looking for general information about it, or maybe like a blog post that goes into, what home organizing entails versus home organizer, they're looking for, a person or a service.

So even those like slight differences can make a big difference. 

Melissa: Okay, this is interesting. That's another thing that I've, I, I have told people this before, but you're articulating it better than I have is those are two totally different things and someone that's a great point as someone might be searching for tips and tricks of home organizing versus home organizer, or there might be someone who is just searching home organizing and pops up.

with you and they go, Oh, I didn't know someone could come into my home and do this. Like there are the difference between three letters can really make a huge difference in how your website searches. 

Julia Renee: Yeah. And for those like more informational searches or like home organizing that's why I recommend using blog posts to, help you rank for that.

Because I see a lot of times. Not even just with home organizing, but lots of different industries where you find a blog post and you're like, Whoa, I didn't know someone could actually do that for me. And then, that's when you can either, potentially hire the person whose website you found originally, or, go to find a service near you.

But that can be a really good opportunity to rank for these more informational searches where someone's getting some more information. They're not. quite ready to commit, but if you can show off your expertise, show them what you can do then that could be a good way to kind of get them into your funnel and hopefully hire you.

Melissa: Right. Let's talk about blogging and its importance for SEO because I'm sure that you see this all the time. I hear it all the time. People avoid doing blog posts. They are scared by they blogging is the B word. They, it's, but. Talk a little bit about how important they are, just so people know when I tell them this, that I'm not lying to them.

Julia Renee: Yeah. Oh yeah. Blogging is important. This doesn't mean you need to be writing, a thousand word blog posts every week. Cause Nobody has time for that. You can, I mean, also with all these AI tools that are coming out, you can use them as I will recommend as a starting point. So if you're just looking at a blank screen and that freaks you out and makes you feel like you're in high school again, trying to write an essay use these AI tools as a starting point, kind of get the gears going, make sure you do edit it and, put your own personal, spin on it and everything like that because no one wants to read just like a robotic.

blog posts that, anyone could have on their site. And also it has been shown that, these more personal blog posts do rank higher on Google than ones that are just straight robot blog posts. So definitely make sure using it as a starting point, but they are important because they allow you to target a lot of different keywords.

So there's people who are kind of in the. Beginning stages of, being interested in home organizing but they don't know that they can hire someone to do it or they, aren't quite ready to commit to it, but kind of are just searching for information. That's a good way to reach those people so that we can kind of reach a variety of people rather than just people who are ready to commit today.

And then. It also allows you to show off your expertise both to Google and to potential clients. So that way, the more that you're, and when I say show off your expertise, make sure it's like all within the home organizing world. Don't start publishing your recipes on, on your blog posts.

Because. That's going to confuse Google about what the purpose of your website is. And the more often that you are publishing, these quality blog posts, that means the more often Google is going to come back and crawl everything on your website. So if you launch your website and then you don't touch it for a year Google doesn't really know if you're still in business because there, hasn't been any activity on it.

But if you are regularly publishing blog posts, and I recommend starting with, about once a month you can definitely add on more if you want to. But then that means Google's going to come back, see that you're still active on your website see that you're targeting new keywords and things like that, and that's going to really help your rankings.

So, all that being said, you do need to make sure that you are optimizing your blog posts. Again, starting with the keyword research to see what people are searching for making sure you're writing, long, quality blog posts, incorporating photos and headings, and then also make sure you're using your keyword throughout your blog posts so both for your website copy and for your blog posts using that keyword 1 to 5 percent of all of the text.

on that page or on that blog post. And then writing title tags and meta descriptions. These are all different ranking factors that are really going to help you, rank higher for your blog posts. So that way you're not just writing blog posts just for the sake of writing blog posts and not getting anything from it.

I have worked with a client who was hiring a company to kind of create these blog posts for her. And she'd been doing it for like over a year and none of them are ranking. They're all very generic blog posts, not really, related to her specific audience or her specific location. So they weren't actually helping her and she had spent a lot of money on these blog posts.

So make sure that blog posts are, for your audience they're optimized well. So that way you will be able to rank well for them and actually get something from these blog posts. 

Melissa: There was a lot of meat there. I want to go back to one. No, I love it. No, no, no, no, no. That was not a criticism.

That was, but I want to go back to one thing specifically that you said, which is. Once a month, you are not telling people that you have to write a blog post every day or even every week if you could do it more. That's great. But one time a month I was talking to someone at the how to summit and she said, I don't have time to blog and I go.

You certainly have two hours, like she had just gotten done telling me like something else she had done. I go, you just told me that you spent two hours on bleh. You have time to write one blog post a month. Okay. So, and I am, I don't mean that to sound judgy. We all are busy guys, but like one blog post a month is all that we're asking to really, really help clients be able to find you.

And also that one thing that I see and I'm sure you see it all the time too. People get overwhelmed by something and so they want to outsource it, which is fine, but you're outsourcing to you might be paying a lot of money for someone to write a blog post that really doesn't know our industry doesn't know the phrasing that we use doesn't know the language that we use

that blog post isn't hitting. So spending the time. On your own thing to help your website, I, I think is really 

Julia Renee: important. Mm-Hmm. and I do offer blog posts optimization services. So if you do wanna just like, write the content and then pass it off and have all the SEO magic worked, but yeah. 'cause I I would love to write blog posts for people, but I do not have the expertise that all of my different clients do.

Yeah. So it's important to have, their expertise and their brand voice, within the blog posts. 

Melissa: That's an important point is you can outsource the thing that is confusing or hard for you to do. And that is the optimization. And that is the SEO magic you can outsource to Julia, but writing it yourself so that you make sure that it's a really quality post in the same way that I would not pretend that I would know how to write an SEO post.

I would not write an SEO blog post for you. You're welcome. You would want to 

Julia Renee: tactically be 

Melissa: good. But Right. The piece yourself, you can start with AI, you can add your voice, you can add your expertise, and then you can hire someone to do the heavy lifting on the back end for you. I love that. But using AI.

I like what you said, too, about it's a starting point. It's not that you just copy and paste it and spit it out. Something that I have heard a lot of organizers say is they feel guilty, essentially, about using AI. To help them with some of this because then they feel like it's not really their work and that's why I say, it is just that starting point you add all of your own flavor.

It's just basically idea generation for you. Is that fair? 

Julia Renee: Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. And I mean, I see copywriters using AI tools for a starting point. So like, yeah, they're, everyone can use these. I mean, there's so many different ways you can use these tools. But yeah, again, as a, as a starting point, you can also use these AI tools for things like title tags and meta descriptions and like kind of those like smaller things where, you're not quite sure what to say or, how to phrase things.

I will say I have used. Chat, GPT specifically. They're not great with like writing optimized blog posts. I've even told them like, what keyword to incorporate and things like that. And it just, it sounds super robotic. . Interesting. So, yeah. So I will say it's a good, again, good starting point, but make sure you're, editing it, adding your voice and then, optimizing it.

So again, it doesn't just sound like a robot wrote it. 

Melissa: Right. Can you talk a little bit about metadescriptions and just explain what that is and why it's important and all that? Mm 

Julia Renee: hmm. Yeah, so title tags and metadescriptions this is what you're gonna see when you, are searching for something in Google.

So title tag is like, The blue title of that particular web page and then the meta description is a little like two sentence text underneath the title tag is the ranking factor The meta description actually is not a ranking factor, but it's still important So yeah, so with the title tag you have up to 60 characters including spaces a lot of platforms like squarespace specifically We'll let you write I think like 100 characters, but google's just going to cut it off after 60.

So 

Melissa: Okay. This is, this is hot news. You guys 60 characters. That's, that's interesting. Okay. Squarespace also 

Julia Renee: has the title tag and meta description listed as optional, which I disagree with. I don't know why every website platform is totally different. I don't know why they do it like this. The meta description, you get 160 characters, including spaces.

Again, I think Squarespace gives you like 400 

Melissa: characters. I was going to say, I think it's like 400. 

Julia Renee: Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. So. Google's just going to cut it off after 160, so don't even try to fill all 400. It doesn't make any sense. So the title tag is the ranking factor, so you definitely want to make sure you have your keyword incorporated somewhere within your title tag.

So don't just leave your, Your page titles as like about and services and things like that, make sure you have, you can get creative with how you incorporate the keyword. If you, so an about page could be like about Julia and then like a hyphen or the whatever that dash is.

Yeah, 

Melissa: the straight up and down line. I forget what that's called. There is a 

Julia Renee: name for it. Yeah. SEO, consultant for small businesses or something like that. So you can add like little taglines at the end. What you don't want to make, what you don't want to do is just have a keyword as the page title and don't have any related text that's on the page.

So like for your about page, I want to make sure you have like about or meet us or somewhere in there. If you just have like professional organizer as like the title tag, Google might change it. Cause they're like, wait, the actual page title is about why don't they have that somewhere in there for your homepage?

I definitely recommend having the name of your business first. And then the keyword after I have seen this a lot of times where people will try to have the keyword first and the business name after. Google doesn't like that for some reason for at least from what I've seen and I've seen them change it where it's just the name of the business and then they drop the keyword.

Totally interesting. Okay. Yeah. So Google is very particular sometimes. So you want to make sure you're kind of following their rules. The meta description, again, is not a ranking factor, but when you incorporate keywords within the rank or within the meta description, they're going to be bold when someone is searching for that particular keyword.

So that way it kind of helps it stand out a little bit more, against. The competition when they're not using meta descriptions the meta description, you really want to make sure that you're speaking to your ideal audience for, either what they're going to see in the blog post or on the page or, give them some compelling reason to visit your, website.

Don't just say, we help families make their home pretty, like, something generic like that really want to make sure that you're speaking to your ideal audience so that when they read the meta description, they feel really compelled to visit your website. Now Google can change the meta description, depending on how someone searches for something, or, related to their past.

So just because you put something in a meta description, Google might change it sometimes, but if you don't put anything in the meta description at all, Google can kind of fill it with whatever they want. So I've seen them pull like the names of the photos. On the web page and fill that in the meta description or even like yeah the social media icons like I've literally seen meta descriptions that say Facebook icon Instagram icon.

Okay, 

Melissa: so it'll pull anything and then if you haven't done the work on your pictures if you haven't named your pictures or done all text or whatever it's just going to pull whatever was pulled from the internet or like whatever it knows what's going to be there is what you're doing. 

Julia Renee: So they're, they're smart, but they're not the most smart sometimes.

So the meta description is at least giving them information for what you want to be included. If you don't put anything, they can fill it with nonsense. And then that can also look really spammy to someone who sees your website and they might not, click on it. Okay. 

Melissa: This is, this is awesome.

This is such, such good information. If people are sitting here, because I think that there is a very good chance that there are people that are listening, that are like yeah, this all sounds really, really, really overwhelming. The great news is Julia will be happy to help you and do all this for you.

So we will be putting all of Julia's information in our show notes in case you're like, I don't want to, Julie, we'll do it for you because she is really good at it. 

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Melissa Klug
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