The Ultimate Blog Podcast - SEO Without the Stress with Bekah Read

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

If the phrase “search engine optimization” makes you break into a sweat, you’re not alone. SEO feels intimidating for a lot of bloggers and small business owners… but it doesn’t have to be.��On this episode of The Ultimate Blog Podcast, we Interviewed Bekah Read, SEO educator and founder of Rebecca Read Creative, to talk about how to make SEO doable, effective, and stress-free. Tune in to learn how to use SEO without getting overwhelmed!📸 Grab your checklist for image optimization💻 Grab Bekah’s free SEO resources, learn her SEO strategy, and enroll in her SEO Course 🔗Start your blog today→ Join The Ultimate Blog RoadmapDo you love this podcast? Say thanks by leaving a positive review and/or rating!  🔗Click here and check out the show notes for this episode!

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki. And I'm Jennifer Draper. Our episodes dive deep into how to monetize your blog, sharing unique insights and practical tips. We bring you in-depth interviews with successful bloggers and experts who offer valuable, actionable advice.

Our mission is to educate, support, inspire, and empower you in your blogging business. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. SEO is always a hot topic, and we are really excited to have Becca Reed with us today to kind of dive into this. She is an SEO educator and the founder of Rebecca

Read Creative. Welcome to the podcast, Becca. Thank you. I'm excited to be here and chat about SEO. Always a hot topic and always something I feel like can come from a lot of different lenses. We can come at SEO like in a simplistic way or complicated and complex. And so I would love for you just to kind of share how do you approach SEO as a whole with your clients and how you teach it? I am definitely more on the, how can we make this as easy and actionable as possible

so that you actually do it? And I think that's what really holds people back is it seems intimidating. Search engine optimization. It's a long, long phrase. It just seems overwhelming. And so my goal is I'm going to just give you the absolute basic information and not do a deep dive so that you actually take action.

I think that's really important. Yeah, I feel like it's one of those things that people hear the word SEO and they kind of freak out. It's like breaks are on. That's too complicated. It's too technical. I'm not doing it. I don't know how to do it. So I like your approach that you keep it quick and simple. So what are some tips that you would give someone to kind of get over that hurdle of feeling like it's way too complicated? It's nothing that I'm gonna be able to do And just to kind of take some action towards implementing SEO for their small business. Yeah. I mean, I think when it comes to SEO, just learning like the basic, so like the

first step when it comes to search engine optimization, which is just like, where is your website on Google? Is it on page one? Is it on page 10? Or any search engine, for that matter. But the first step is just keyword research. Just figure out what people are actually, what phrase are they using to find you. And then it's just a matter of putting the phrase onto your website. And blogging is something I'm very passionate about.

When I started my business, I enjoyed blogging, which is why I did it, but nobody was reading my blogs. Maybe my mom or my sister, but that's it. But I continued to do it because I wanted to potentially get off Instagram at some point, and I hoped that that was a route, and it has proven to be incredibly beneficial for me, especially when I've been on maternity leaves, like my business has run on the back end. So I just

want to encourage anyone. It's not that instant gratification, but it's so worth it. And so just starting off by just figuring out what's a keyword phrase that somebody uses to find you. If you're a Nashville wedding photographer, start there. Maybe they're using the phrase Nashville wedding photographer. And then what I personally do is I go to Ubersuggest. There's a lot of keyword tools. I find Ubersuggest to just be the easiest. And I just plug that keyword into Ubersuggest, Nashville wedding photographer, whatever you are. And it'll give you a keyword difficulty. And so it'll tell you like, is this gonna be really hard for you to rank for?

Is Target and other really big platforms using it? Probably not a great keyword to go for then. And this is just gonna be, again, your first step. You're just gonna figure out, and maybe it's not the most perfect keyword for you, but like, it's just, again, my thing, grab a keyword and move forward with your life. And so that's just the first step when it comes to SEO.

And like a lot of things in the online space, I think that you made a good point there. Like you just got to do it. You just got to get it out there. We can really overthink a lot of things that we need to do, whether it's, you know, website design or writing a blog post or even like an Instagram caption or whatever. But what keeps us from actually connecting with anybody is the inability to get it done or share it in any way. So I know that that's something that a lot of our members, conservatives feel overwhelmed with is finding that perfect key word.

And I love that you're just saying, do a little bit of research, don't completely ignore it, but also don't be completely consumed by it either. Because I think that there's kind of two different camps in regards to SEO. One, you have the people who love it. It's just like lights them up. They are so excited. They love researching it. And then you have the other camp of like, I hate that. I don't want to do it. I don't want to write that way. And so what do you say to the person who's like, I don't even want to try at all? Because I think that I'm thinking of some people that I know over the years and who have just been like, I know that I should be doing that, but I don't want to. And so

I'm not going to. How do you think that's continuing to hurt, you know, bloggers and business owners by not implementing keyword research? Like, is this something that you see is going to continue to like stay important or like with AI and everything, is this, is it changing? I think it's going to be extremely important and it's going to stay relevant. The algorithm of Google and Yahoo and whatever might change. But what I have seen since starting my business back in 2018 is if you are writing quality content, and that's kind of when we step into the AI, like I am all about using ChatGPT.

I personally love it. And so like prime example, when you're doing keyword research, you might think everybody's gonna use Nashville wedding photographer. Great, go ask ChatGPT, what are some other keyword phrases people might use related to this?

It'll give you a whole bunch. Plug those into Ubersuggest for some ideas. And you might be surprised. I forgot to say this. When you do look at Ubersuggest, it gives you a search volume. And so I just look for the search volume to be above 100. You want somebody searching for it. And then it gives you an SD, SEO difficulty. And I look between 15 and 35. If it's more than 35, it's just a little bit too

hard. So then just grab a couple of keyword phrases. I'll end say use AI to your advantage, but it's not going to go away. Again, like I just think to talk to the person who feels this is just overwhelming, what is something that you enjoy? Is there anything related to your website that you enjoy? Maybe it's updating your full page and you enjoy design. Maybe it's you love podcasting. Great.

Take that podcast, get your podcast script, put it into ChatGPT and say, ChatGPT, can you make this a little bit more coherent? Because sometimes the scripts are crazy. And then I like to go in after and just say, okay, like, where can I super organically add this keyword? Don't overthink it. Just find one or two spots. Because here's the thing, if you are a brand new business owner, and let's say you get a brand new website, and it has three to five pages because that's all you need. You just need a home about and a content, let's say. That's really only three pages or three opportunities to use that keyword phrase.

And so the advantage of blogging is you're simply just creating more pages, just creating more opportunities to put that phrase in. And so again, don't overthink it. If you like blogging, write some blog posts. If you like podcasting, make the script. If you like YouTube video stuff, do that. And again, same thing, you can get that script from YouTube. It'll be super crazy. So just make sure that you put it into some type of platform to make it un-crazy. But yeah, just think about what you enjoy and then see how you can add SEO into that.

Yeah, I think it's a balance because what people think about keyword research is I am trying to please Google or whatever search engine it is. But in reality, what you're doing is just using as a tool to find out what actual people out there are typing into a search bar. people out there are typing into a search bar. So for the people that are like, oh, I don't want to do it. You're not like neglecting your audience or neglecting their needs or what you want to write about by doing some SEO and keyword research. You're really just honing in on what they are really looking for. And so I think if people can shift that mindset a little bit, it can make it a little bit more exciting because then you're like, oh, I'm actually getting like some insider information into what people are looking for so that I can create the right kind of content that they will actually find.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that you do see people making once they do start to implement some SEO strategy in their business? I mean, I think one of them is what we just talked about and just ignoring keyword research and just jumping in. That was my thing. I just wanted to jump into writing blog posts. I loved it, which I will say, if you write enough blog posts, you'll probably come across a keyword phrase. It's so funny at this point, what blogs rank. And I'm like, that's not the blog I wanted. I have a blog about Shopify. I don't design on Shopify, but I have one blog post about it, and it ranks so well, and I'm like, dang it.

But, you know, so, like, you could probably save yourself some time and be a little bit more strategic than I was. So I just think ignoring the keyword research, that's probably mistake number one. Another mistake is not optimizing the site structure. So all I mean by that is, like, how's your site navigation? Make it really clear at the top, because if people are overwhelmed because you have 15 different, you know,

like, things in your menu, they're just gonna leave. And Google wants another element of SEO is how long are they staying on your website? Another reason I love blogging. But, and when you blog, like, embedding YouTube videos, another great way to get them to staying on your website? Another reason I love blogging. But, and when you blog, like embedding YouTube videos, another great way to get them to stay on your website. So thinking about page speed, is everything loading quickly?

If you have your photos kind of compressed so they're not so big, it'll load quicker. Just thinking a little bit about that. Poor site navigation, slow page speed. And then if you wanna go a tiny, again, I'm not going to go deep into the weeds, but I'll just touch on every page should have an H1, which is a heading one.

And that heading one, if you can, try to make that H1 have your keyword phrase, if possible in it. So that's what I mean just by site structure. That would be another mistake. And then honestly, I know I've talked about blogging a lot, but I think neglecting fresh optimized content is something that so many people don't do. I have a course that teaches people

how to DIY their website. And there was a girl who was a photographer, and she's like, I want to get my blog ranking. Like, what can I do to get my website ranking quickly? And I was like, well, first of all, SEO does take time. So just have that in the back of your head. But if you are blogging, even just like once a month, get my website ranking quickly. And I was like, well, first of all, SEO does take time. So just have that in the back of your head. But if you are blogging, even just like once a month,

you're doing more than what most photographers are doing. And like people just don't, or even I had a home inspector. I'm like, write some blogs about Spokane, home inspecting related type of things. And you're gonna just bump up pretty quickly because that keyword phrase of Spokane, home improvement type of things and you're going to just bump up pretty quickly because that keyword phrase of Spokane home improvement type of things isn't, it didn't have a high SEO difficulty. So just making sure that you're adding fresh content to your website is a great

way, or if you have blogs and you're feel burnt out on blogs, go in and just maybe, and this is something that I did not do in the beginning is SEO optimizing my blog post. I just wrote them. So go back and just see, okay, is there some way that I can make this blog a little bit more SEO optimized? So is there a place I can put a heading one, that H1, just like on every page you should have it, on every blog you should have it? And can I make that H1 have an SEO friendly title?

It doesn't have to be perfect. Just going in, is there a couple photos I can add to that blog post? And make sure those photos are compressed to like less than one megabyte for sure. And then titling, you can make your photo have a title on it. So you want to have that alt text. Making sure that alt text and the title of the image

are SEO-friendly. The alt text, alt side note, text and the title of the image are SEO friendly. The alt text, alt side note, should actually be more for screen readers. So explain what the image is. But then if you can, there's a way you can add in an SEO thing. Great, but that shouldn't be a primary concern. But yeah, just making sure that you do all that. That's adding fresh content to your website. And that's something that search engines like to see.

Definitely. Yeah. Really, really great tips there. Really great advice. We're in total alignment with everything that you just said. We're both shaking our head as you're talking. And I know that it can feel possibly overwhelming, you know, if somebody, if this is like their first taste,

if we're talking about like just some simple SEO things that they can do. Yeah. But just like my encouragement would be to just like write a small list out and be like, okay, does each blog post have these things? Like in the roadmap that we have, we have that like blog post checklist. So these are the things that your blog post needs to have. And that way when you're creating your content, you don't have to just try to remember it. You can just go through that checklist and make sure, okay, does it

have this? Does it have this? Does it have this? Because all those things are very important. Do you know that uploading huge image files to your blog without optimizing them can slow down your site, take up unnecessary storage, and potentially even hurt your SEO. Many bloggers don't realize this. They don't understand that image optimization is a crucial step in setting up and running a successful blog. But don't worry, we've made it simple for you. We have created the 8-Step Guide to Image Optimization and it is going to walk you through

exactly what you need to do to ensure that your images are properly sized, compressed and named the way that they should be without feeling overwhelmed. If you are skipping this step on your blog today, you could be creating problems down the road. But with this guide, you're going to know exactly what to do to keep your site running fast and efficiently. guide, you're going to know exactly what to do to keep your site running fast and efficiently. You can get your guide now at theultimateblogpodcast.com image optimization and make sure that you're doing it right. We will also put a link to this free guide in our show notes. Again, the link is the ultimateblogpodcast.com slash image optimization. I'm gonna kind of shift gears a little bit.

We had somebody on the podcast, Dolly on the podcast back a while ago, and she actually shared a system and a way to optimize content in order to be found on Google. And when she shared about it, she said right away, this is not my system. I just use it, but I learned it from Becca Redd. And so she told us, if you go back to listen to episode one 33, you'll hear say that right at the beginning.

So can you kind of talk about this system that you recommend the pig fell system and what that does? Yeah. So I just, when I started the system, I didn't know it was a system. Dolly was the one who was like, this is a thing. And I was like, oh, okay. She's the systems in workflow. Yeah. It sounds good, but it really just, I was, when I started creating blog

content, so that is my pillar main content or it was for a while. Now I do YouTube and then I put it into a blog. So I was creating these blog posts. Nobody was reading them again, was for a while. Now I do YouTube and then I put it into a blog. So I was creating these blog posts. Nobody was reading them again, except for my mom. And so I said, okay, how can I get these blog posts to like be shown to more people, which then if Google sees, oh, like more people are on this blog post, they're going to push it out to more.

So I was like, I need to try to get it to get it to my people, right? Because they're not just going to go type in rebeccareadcreative.com backslash blog. They're not doing that. So I decided to take advantage of the social media platforms I was on. Now, this is going to sound extremely intense

and overwhelming, and I want to tell you, it takes me 20 minutes. It's not intense because at this point, I have it dialed in. So, PIGFUL stands for Pinterest, Instagram, Google Business Listing, and then email if you have an email, and then LinkedIn. If you're not on all those platforms, then you can eliminate whatever one doesn't apply to you.

But I am an advocate of just focusing on one platform. Like, I do post on Instagram, But I am an advocate of just focusing on one platform. I do post on Instagram, but my main thing is my blog and my YouTube. And if I were to get off those social medias, I would be fine. I don't want to advocate that you be on all these social medias. Just push out your content quickly to all of them. So what I do is I go into Canva and I create two graphics. I create a graphic that's kind of a vertical and a graphic that's horizontal.

And the vertical one is Pinterest sized or Instagram story sized. And that graphic is what I put on Pinterest. So the Pickful Pinterest, I put that graphic and then I just, again, I'm just putting in, you can even go into Chat Cheapity. Guys, I've really taken advantage of this AI. And I will top and paste my entire blog. And I'll say, please create a Pinterest title and description because I am not a Pinterest expert.

I am just here to do what I need to do, right? So it'll then take my words. So I'm not like doing any plagiarism. It'll take my words and come up with a Pinterest title and a Pinterest description that probably is far more SEO optimized than I would create. So literally, this takes me like to create that graphic, which I already have Pinterest graphics created in Canva. I'm just plugging in the new information.

Take three minutes, right? Post it on Pinterest. Great. Instagram. I go onto my Instagram and I take that exact same graphic. It's not perfectly sized, but it's close enough. I don't care. I'm a mom it's close enough. I don't care. I'm a mom of two toddlers.

I don't have time to create a graphic for everything. I put it on my Instagram story. I put the little link sticker. Done. If you want to go above and beyond, you can create a reel. But that's not really a part of the I. I for Instagram for me is just posting it to my story. G is the Google Business, Google My Business listing.

If you don't have a Google Business profile, go claim it. It's so easy and it's like what I suggest to every single new business owner because it gives you that immediate, like you can get to the top of Google so quickly, whereas your website's going to take some time. A lot of people think of Google Businesses listings for local like coffee shops and that type of thing.

And that's definitely, they should definitely have one. But I noticed when I created my Google Business listing way back in the beginning as a website designer, I put my territory as my city, as Spokane, Washington. And I jumped up so high on Google because the first thing that comes up is your Google Map, right? Before even all of those, so my Google Map came up and I got two reviews on it, like

not even very many, just a couple past clients left me a couple of reviews and I just noticed, wow, I can pop up really high really quickly because not a lot of website designers claim a Google business profile. Now I will say if you don't want to put your city because you serve everybody in the US, that's fine. I have noticed personally I don't come up as much. I used to get a lot of traffic from my Google business because I was so dialed into that city and now I have the whole US and that's fine for me but I don't get as much.

So just something to keep in the back of your mind. But the third place of Pickful is you just add an update. It's literally a Facebook post. So whatever you're gonna put on your Facebook post, just do the exact same. You just click add update and then you do a, well, you could do any type of photo. I use my horizontal photo and I create that horizontal photo

for my YouTube graphic, that's why I have it. And that's what I use for my Google business listing, is I use that photo. Again, you could go into ChatGPT and say, create me a Google business post, and then you just post it. So that one's Google, and then Facebook, same thing, just post it on Facebook.

And with that, you could use a graphic, or if you just add the link, it will pull in the graphic you established, same thing, just post it on Facebook. And with that, you could use a graphic or if you just add the link, it will pull in the graphic you establish, your share graphic, your main graphic. So you could just use that. And then email, if you have an email list, send it out to your email list. And then LinkedIn, again, takes me like no time. I just literally post it to LinkedIn. It takes me a minute. So that full system, once you have those graphics created in Canva, those two graphics, it really only takes between five and 20 minutes. Yeah. I think the important thing that you're stating there is that you aren't just posting

and ghosting. You have to kind of work the system a little bit and you have to tell it, hey, come see it. It's kind of like if you imagine yourself as a brand new store owner and you never tell anybody that you're opening the store, you don't put a sign on the door, you don't do anything, but you're sitting there and you're like, are they going to come? Are they coming? Who's going to show up today? But you've told nobody that you've done it, that you've opened this thing

and you have this, this incredible service. Blogging is kind of like that. And so whether you utilize all the platforms that you've opened this thing and you have this incredible service. Blogging is kind of like that. And so whether you utilize all the platforms that Becca just talked about or not, I think at least having like a checklist for yourself of these are the places that it's going to get promoted each time is going to be so helpful. So I'll share how we do it for the podcast just as kind of another example. So for the podcast, for instance, for each episode,

I'll have episode and then I have the different tasks that I need, but then also in the different ways that I want to promote it. So sharing it in Instagram stories, we have the VA who posts it onto our Instagram, but then I share it onto our Facebook page, and we just started doing Spotify for creators as well. So you can add clips into Spotify onto our Facebook page and we just started doing Spotify for creators as well so you

can add clips into Spotify and to hopefully be discovered more that way as well. So with every single podcast episode that goes out, that's getting that juice kind of there as well. So think about your content, where you already are. I love that you said you don't have to be on all these platforms, but you do have to promote your content. You've worked really hard. You've done the SEO. You have something that you said you don't have to be on all these platforms, but you do have to promote your content You've worked really hard. You've done the SEO you have something that you want to share you have a solution don't don't be afraid to promote it because

That's why you're doing this is because you want people you want people to find you and it's a really important piece of that puzzle is Is doing that I love that whole system. I'll also put in the show notes Dolly's episode and she can share how she does it as well. I think it's just so insightful to hear how different people are doing that, especially the Google business listing. That was something honestly before Dolly came on that we hadn't ever thought of either. So really insightful and thank you just for being willing to share that with everybody. Yeah. Okay.

So we are about to head out, but one question I want to kind of leave with is this. If a business owner could only do one thing for SEO this month, like right now, if they want to take immediate action, what would be that one thing that you recommend? I think, okay, I'm going to give two answers because it's going to vary on industry just slightly. So if you're a photographer, I'm going to say the one thing is just optimize 10 images. Like you don't need because I know you probably have a lot on your website.

Just just do 10, you know, and then maybe set like a monthly to do a task to do 10 more but go and you might might have to re-download the image or something, but compress it and then re-title it. So if it's titled IMG underscore 123.jpg, go in and title it Nashville dash wedding dash photographer dot jpg. So that's what I would suggest for photo-based businesses. And if you are everybody else in the world, claim and optimize your Google business profile. I think that's really, and if you already have that done, then I would say maybe think about some,

like on the backend of every page, you have SEO settings. It's really easy to find. It's just on the page, you can click on like a wheel if you have a Squares base, show it. It's on the right-hand side. And you can add your own title and your own meta description. And that's really great to change out because when somebody searches something on Google or whatever, you have all these businesses that come up. And so you want your meta description to be super compelling and just draw them in

so they click on your business instead of every other one. So that would be my other. And again, if you can make that title to be optimized by SEO, that would be great. As well as if you can in the meta description, I see more focus on like, you know, making it engaging. But if you can add some keywords to that meta description, great. So that would be my tip.

If you already have a good Google business profile and if you're not a photographer. Awesome tips. If you use WordPress too, that will be on Yoast. And we just had Carolyn Shelby on the podcast talking about Yoast not too long ago. So excellent tips there, more SEO tips as well if you want to learn more about that so you can go check out that episode. Becca, thanks for joining us today.

Can you please let everybody know where they can find you and connect with you? Yeah, I'm on all the platforms. However, I'm not active on LinkedIn, but you can find me there. Instagram is usually where I hang out and it's just Rebecca Reed-Kreta. It's spelled a little funny, so we'll link it below. And then I do have a free resource that just gives you an SEO checklist and a challenge if you want to go through that. But yeah, connect to me on Instagram or my website.

Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about building your blog, visit theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash newsletter to get signed up for our email newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you next time.