Creating a traffic strategy and using SEO to reach the right people for free (with Nicki Sciberras)

Nicki Sciberras is an SEO and meta ads strategist, coach and former Launch Magic student who helps online businesses grow and scale their brands. Today Nicki is joining me to deep dive into the SEO world and the value it can provide to your business.

– Understanding SEO and the power of an effective traffic strategy (and tips to create one)
– Why SEO should be a priority in your business and the 3 key elements for beginners
– Handy hacks to increase your domain authority and the importance of driving backlinks
– Debunking common misconceptions of SEO and the pros and cons of DIY vs hiring an agency
– The simple steps you can take now to optimise your reach
– How to use Chat-GPT and AI tools in your SEO process to save time

You can connect with Nicki at https://www.thedigitalexchange.co/ and download her free traffic and sales calculator at https://www.thedigitalexchange.co/traffic or check out her SEO course at https://www.thedigitalexchange.co/smewaitlist

 

 
Let me ask you a question, have you ever struggled to get your brand or your website in front of the right people? And maybe like most of my listeners of this show, you probably don't have a budget or much of a budget to invest in paid advertising, to get your brand in front of the right people.

Today's guest is a student of mine and also an SEO and meta ads expert, Nikki Sciberras, and she is here to talk to you all about building out your traffic strategy to get your brand in front of the right people, get your website in front of the right people so that they can get there and then convert, take that next action that you want them to take.

And we're talking all about SEO today because SEO is one of the untapped free ways to get these right people onto your website and it's one of these things that I've noticed so many online business owners don't put the time and energy into simply because it seems really techie, it seems really scary. It seems really time-consuming, but it's not. 

And today we're going to talk about where you can get started with SEO, some of the big mistakes to avoid, and where it all fits in with your broader marketing plan and your traffic strategy for your business. So let's jump into the chat with Nicki.

 

“Hello, everyone! And thank you, Steph. I'm so excited to be here. I am actually very honored that you've had me on as an expert. I've learned so much from you and I'm your number one cheerleader. So this is very exciting.”

 

The importance of traffic strategy in an online business.

“So this is such an important area and there are so many businesses and entrepreneurs that don't actually touch on this but essentially in order to get leads, sales, and revenue, you need to be getting traffic to your website because if there's no visibility and you're not getting any visitors, then you're never going to be able to sell anything because there's nobody to sell anything to.

So, in general, we say there's a conversion rate of about 2%, which means that for every hundred people that come to your website, two people will take the action that you want. So in saying all that, if you are only getting two sales per a hundred people that come to visit, you're going to need to get a lot of traffic to actually hit those revenue goals.

But you need to be looking at your numbers in order to be able to have a proper marketing strategy. Otherwise, you're just going in blind and you won't be able to hit those revenue goals that you want.”

 

Traffic strategy from a practical sense.

“Essentially the way that we do it is we look at your revenue goal for the year and we have a calculator that I can share with you that actually does all this for you. So basically it'll say, what's your conversion rate on your website?

What's the average spend that people do whether it's this service or for a program? And then, it'll spit out how much traffic you need to get and then what we get our students to do and our clients is actually work out what kind of traffic they're currently getting already by using Google Analytics or the analytics in the back end of their website and then see what the difference is. 

And we like to look at where the traffic is coming from mostly now. Whether it be from search engine optimisation, social media, or paid advertising and then we work out where you're getting the best bang for your buck. So where are you spending the least amount of time or money, but you're actually getting the best results.

And then you should start putting more time and effort into those areas. But generally, we find it's the same kind of areas and it's different to what people think it is. Generally, we find a lot of people thinking it's social media that's driving the traffic but if you actually look in your analytics, your insights on Instagram for example, you could be getting like two people a month visiting your website from Instagram.

And if you need a hundred people to make a sale, it's going to take you months and months to get sales off based on a traffic strategy from there that's why you need to look at other strategies to boost them.”

 

SEO and who should be doing it.

“SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, is all the actions that you take on and off your website in order to rank in first place in Google. Now, just as a bit of a fun fact they said that SEO drives a thousand percent more traffic than social media, which is huge, and 91 percent of pages don't even have an organic traffic strategy.

So essentially there are actions that you can take on and off your website and off your website. There might be things like making sure your website is set up right. So make sure that each page is loading in under three seconds, has some keywords on your website and then off your website would be getting people to link to your website.

So through directories or guest posting, things like that. Having a search engine optimisation strategy is going to get people searching Google if you get first place coming to your website or even if you're in the top whatever three you've got the highest chance of getting traffic to your website and that's going to increase how much traffic's coming to your website which is basically going to help you get more leads and sales because if you want to get like two sales or two leads you need at least 100 people coming to your website so you need to make sure you're increasing that traffic and search engine optimization is a free way to do that and it's super simple and it's low maintenance as well compared to social media.”

 

How to begin SEO.

“It is not as difficult as people think. I would generally go to say an expert's page to have a look at, you know, what they're telling you to do but just to give you a bit of a breakdown, it does include three main areas, which is your website set up.

And then you've got your keywords and your keyword optimisation. So finding those keywords that people are searching to find products or services like yours or programs and adding them to all the right places on your website and then there is your backlink.

So you've got those three main areas, but I would generally start by looking at experts' pages because that's going to be the simplest way, or going to YouTube.” 

 

Why online business owners should prioritise SEO.

“SEO is something that you can do at any stage of your business, but I think it's best to do it when you're first making your website because then you can include all the elements that you need as you're doing the build. But in saying that, even if you've done the build, it's not too difficult to go back and just audit your website and check everything and start adding it in.

So I would say it's best to do it from when you first start and you know, when you first start, you might not have a budget to do marketing. So most people start off with a social media page and don't get me wrong. It's great to have an online presence, but just don't spend stacks of time there because you're not going to necessarily without paid advertising, see that needle moving very fast.

And you shouldn't really be starting paid advertising anyway until you've got a proven sales system that works like your website's actually converting. So I would say get set up on that from day one because you're bringing qualified traffic to your website. It's a free way to market your business.

People are searching for the exact keywords that describe what you offer or sell. So it's pretty much a no-brainer and not only that, it's got longevity, and all the actions you take compound. 

So, essentially, if you set up your SEO today, your SEO is only going to get better and bring you more traffic as time goes on, so it makes more sense to do it now, so it keeps giving you traffic for years to come, unlike something like social media where the post basically expires after 24 hours, and even within the first hour of you not getting any engagement, it pretty much dies off, and you could spend an hour doing that a day, you know, creating something in Canva, writing a caption, editing it, engaging, whatever.

You could spend an hour writing a blog and getting backlinks to it or finding some backlinks and the SEO strategy is going to bring you so much more traffic, which will then lead to lead, sales and revenue in the long run.”

 

How long can you expect to see the return on the time you’re putting into SEO.

“I usually say at least three to six months. And the thing is, a lot of people are doing the technical setup and the keywords but they're not doing the backlinks. So as soon as you start implementing the backlinks, and you give it like a month or two months for Google to start crawling those pages and kicking in, that's when you're going to start seeing results.

Before you add those backlinks, you're probably not going to see a lot of traction. It's the backlinks that are really going to drive you up.”

 

Misconceptions about SEO are stopping entrepreneurs from doing it.

“I think one of the main ones is that people think it costs money. So they think that it's not free to do, and it's related to Google ads. So Google ads is a completely separate beast and I think the second one is that it's going to be super time-consuming. The main one is that it's super techie and hard. So, I mean, it's not techie. It is a little bit techie, but if you have the right person to guide you or you're following the right tutorial and you know the exact things to look for, it's just ticking certain things off and making sure that you're ticking those boxes. It's not as scary as people think. 

And the thing is, now there is so much powerful software out there that does like 90 percent of the work for you.” 

 

Time commitment to see results in SEO.

“So when people do our program, we say to get everything done. So if you were doing it in a program, you could do most of the bulk of the upwork front, say in maybe 20 to 30 hours. And then after that, you could probably do an hour a week and you don't even need to do an hour a week. It's just if you want to keep getting like growing your keywords and getting to position one.

I find that most of the work you could get done at the start and then you could review it again in, say, six months' time if you want to go after bigger and more high-volume keywords. So yeah, I would say about 20 to 30 hours, but it sounds like a lot, but it's not if you just knuckle down, spend three to five hours a week getting it done and then an hour after that.”

 

Pros and cons of hiring an SEO expert versus DIY.

“Doing it yourself, obviously, you're going to save money, but it's going to cost you time. That's the difference. So, I would say it's one of the main benefits is that you're learning a skill that's probably not going to go out of fashion for a long time. People say is SEO dead?

It's not really because there's always going to be things that people are researching and searching so it may just evolve to look a little bit differently. I think it's a skill that you would benefit from for years to come so that would be the main thing. 

A positive side of getting an agency to do it is obviously that they are the experts so they might be able to get quicker results for you but I guess it just depends on where you want to spend your budget.” 

 

ChatGPT and SEO.

“The favourite tool that everyone I've been sharing with everyone that they've been loving is Neil Patel's keyword optimisation AI tool. So essentially what you can do is you can put in your keyword or your keyword phrase and it'll pop out a headline with that keyword in it will pop out a title tag and you can also do that in ChatGPT. You can say, Hey, ChatGPT, please write me a keyword description for this keyword phrase. So you can definitely use that but I really love Neil Patel's cause it does all the areas that you need for keyword optimisation and obviously, Neil Patel is a huge SEO expert. 

So, you know, that software would be spitting it out pretty accurately to what you need. And obviously, you can always tweak it for your tone of voice.” 

 

Nicki’s imperfect action.

“So I would say I just did my new branding and basically I had to do a whole bunch of things that I've never done and it ended up okay. I DIY'd a whole bunch of things and I had people helping me and it didn't end up going to plan.

I ended up having to do a few things myself but I think I've had some good feedback and that rebrand has been a long time coming, so it's really exciting to see that it's finally out there in the world.”

 

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