3 Things You Need to Know About SEO Right Now

Who I am and The Multiverse AI

0:00

So my name is Tanya Van Gastel. I spent the last 10 years working in marketing. I worked at OnePlus, I was a journalist, I worked at Vogue Business, I worked in venture capital for a little bit, and I've done this all over the world. I lived in China for 7 years, in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. I lived in Germany, and I'm originally Belgian. So I worked in a lot of different cultural contexts. And last year I took a huge risk.

I quit my job. I was working full-time in a smartphone company. I was so burned out, but I quit my job and I started a company, and I started other companies after that as well. But I'm going to talk to you today about the Multiverse AI. The Multiverse AI is a platform to create headshots with AI, and this is mine. This is completely AI generated. I did not pose for that photo. It's up on the Multiverse AI.

It costs $29 and it's designed specifically to keep headshots super affordable for everybody, and also make it a great experience for remote teams to actually create headshots that work for them. Next slide. We've been very lucky with the Multiverse AI. We are a small business. We are a team of three people. We are a marketing team of one person. You're looking at her.

That means that I, like you guys, understand that when somebody says SEO, it's really annoying, because it sounds very complicated. I don't really know what it means, frankly. I feel like when people talk to me about these things that I should do, they don't understand how little time I have, how little budget I have, and I get frustrated. And so when I started to delve into SEO, because we had no budget, I was like, what is all of this?

I do not understand anything. It feels too complicated.

Only three things matter

1:56

So today I want to keep it really freaking easy for you guys. I want to tell you what I wish somebody had told me. Right? So we're going to only focus on three things. Forget anything else. If anybody says anything else about SEO outside of these three things, don't listen to them. I'm serious. Yeah. Next slide, please.

Ads are terrible

2:16

So as a quick side note, sometimes people are like, oh my God, you do ads, ads are great. No. Next slide, please. Ads are terrible. Don't let anybody gaslight you into buying ads. Ads are expensive, you have to keep buying them, you probably will not make any money on your products using ads, and ads are becoming more difficult as well. Why? Because of beautiful, gorgeous pro-consumer privacy laws. It's a great thing.

For businesses it's kind of tough, though, because it becomes a lot more expensive for us to actually find our customers and sell to them. So ads, don't do it. SEO. We're going to play a game, by the way. Next slide. Okay, great. So I'm going to say a word and you're going to say matters. Right? SEO. Okay, I love that. You guys are such a good audience.

Why SEO: 400,000 visitors with one marketer

3:13

So why should I tell you about SEO? This is a screenshot from my Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free. This is a screenshot from my analytics. There's a lot of people in the world, and we forget, because we're in a room and we're in a city and we're in a country. There's 1.3 billion people in the world. Almost all of them have internet. Almost all of them have Google. It's beautiful.

This is a screenshot from my Google Analytics back end of the last 3 months, and 400,000 people, that's a quarter of the population of Barcelona, 400,000 people have seen the Multiverse AI, my business, run by one marketing person, because of SEO. Why SEO? Yes, it does. So that's great. Search engine optimization. Again, I want to buy AI headshots. I Google best AI headshot generator. I find the Multiverse AI. That's it. That's the flow. It's easy.

People, when they search for something, they already want it. You don't have to sell to them. You just have to be there. That's a huge difference, right? Because now it becomes about discoverability. Think about Katie. Katie's a fractional CEO. Hire her, she's great. But if I Google fractional CEO Barcelona, who do I find? That's the person that I'm going to hire. That's it. That's the whole flow of it. I don't have time, I just want results right now. Google. Because SEO.

It feels very powerful to do that. Okay, next slide.

Local keywords are money

4:55

So why could you be missing out on 10 times the clients right now? Because all of you guys, well, not all of you, but a lot of you are local businesses. This is so powerful, you have no idea. People would die to be a local business. People would die to be a local business, because localized keywords, your niche plus Barcelona, equals money, equals clientele. So if you have a website, this is you figuring out if SEO is right for you.

If you have a website, optimize your website for keywords. It could be 10x if you are targeting localized, local keywords. Localized keywords 10x your consumer base. Are you creating any content? Any content. I'm talking about YouTube videos, I'm talking about Instagram posts, Instagram reels, LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn articles. Any of that can be optimized, and I bet that a lot of you are doing it right now, and I'm going to tell you how to do it even better. Next slide, please.

You need the right keywords, you need the right backlinks, and you need the right tools. Forget everything else. SEO matters. Keywords matter. Tools matter. Backlinks matter. Okay, I went in the wrong order, but it's fine. Okay, next slide.

Keyword difficulty and search volume

6:15

So this is where we do a little bit of analysis. We look at numbers, which is so fun if you understand that this leads directly to clientele. This is a screenshot from a very expensive, to be honest, tool. There are better tools, but this is amazing, from a very good data bank that shows you keyword volume. We're going to tell you what everything means. Right? So you see here, Sagrada Familia.

KD stands for keyword difficulty, and then SV stands for search volume. Search volume means how many people are looking for this key term every month. Keyword difficulty is how hard is it for me to show up in search results. No, we stay there. We stay there. Sagrada Familia, keyword difficulty 48, but 4,000 people search for it every month. If I was the Sagrada Familia, I would be great. I'm not.

If I was doing team buildings in Barcelona: team building Barcelona, zero keyword difficulty. That's beautiful. We love that. It's very easy to rank. If there's zero difficulty, nobody's trying. You're going to be on the first page, like this. Team building Barcelona, zero keyword difficulty, 200 search volume. GSV actually stands for global search volume. So this is local, actually this is US search volume. Global search volume is all over the world.

People are trying to do team building in Barcelona, apparently 1,100 searches a month, and these are people who are probably ready to buy. They want to do a team building. They have a team. They want to build it in Barcelona. That's wonderful. Next slide, please. So this is where your 10x comes in. Let's say you are a team coach. Right? Let's say that you are like, oh my god, 1,100 people ready to buy from me every month, forever, for free.

Yes, that is what it is. But only if you understand keywords properly. Only if you understand that keywords are very tricky and very weird and very funny. Because if you search for team building Barcelona, one word, it is only a global search volume of 300. Pathetic. I don't like that at all. I want four times. I want 1,300, sorry, 1,100 search volume. This is happening every month.

That means that it's 1,100 times 12 annual potential visitors to your website, every year, in perpetuity. That's crazy. All right, so who's going to write a LinkedIn article later called team building Barcelona, two words? Team building Barcelona. So that's really important to know. This is the power of keywords. Because keywords, yes. So let's go to the next slide. So this is a key takeaway for keywords. You want to be targeting low hanging fruit: high volume, low difficulty. Go lazy.

You don't have to work that hard. Work smart. Second thing is optimize your content. Instead of making it team building, one word, make it team building, two words. Bam. Four times the volume, four times the potential people to your website. That's crazy. Crazy. Optimize your content, even if it's only slightly, because otherwise you are missing out on traffic. You're already building the content, optimize it a little bit.

Power yourself with knowledge, because keywords really do open up the key to the universe. I always say this. People don't believe me, but SEO opens the keys to the universe. It helps you understand what your clients are looking for and how to provide it to them, in one step. Next slide, please.

Backlinks are votes of confidence

10:29

Second thing, because only three things matter: keywords, backlinks, tools. Wonderful. So backlinks are another key thing. A backlink is a vote of confidence from one website to another. So let's say that on the Multiverse AI, I link to the Metropolitan Barcelona. Yeah, wow, go Metropolitan. Let's say that I link to it. That means that the Multiverse AI trusts the Metropolitan Barcelona, because this is how Google picks up on which sites you can trust and which sites are not good. Right?

Because there needs to be a way for them to discern that. And so your domain rating is kind of like your trust rating. A backlink is a vote of confidence, and everybody can check their domain rating, their trust rating, for free. I have links later. And you should always be best friends with people who have a website with a good domain rating, and you should ask them for a backlink.

You should ask them for a vote of confidence, because it's very, very helpful for your website. And so Multiverse AI, domain rating of 52. We are good. We're not excellent, we're not fantastic. Once you are beginning, you're going to be here: starter. They said it was bad at first, and I was like, no, let's make it starter, because you're just starting, you're not bad. But really, when you are in that starter bracket, you need to really work towards getting those backlinks.

They're very, very important. Ask everybody, check their websites for the domain rating, ask them for a backlink. It's very easy for them, it costs them nothing, and it helps you a lot. So yeah, more backlinks, more votes of confidence. Very, very important. If your keyword difficulty is higher than zero for your keyword, you're going to need more votes of confidence. That's basically all that it is. Let's go to the next slide, please.

How you can get more backlinks: there are backlink exchange websites. You can submit your company, your website, to a directory. Barcelona startups.com, it's the directory for startups in Barcelona. You get a free backlink, and also you can discover other startups in Barcelona. And you can of course also get into awesome media like the Metropolitan Barcelona or other ones. And so I really highly recommend that.

Get more backlinks, get more votes of confidence, work on your keywords, and you will get traffic in no time. Next slide, please.

Tools for keywords and backlinks

13:01

So there are some tools for keywords and backlinks. Some are really expensive. This is a problem in SEO right now. It's a massive problem. It's very expensive, it's a bit complex, and it's kind of difficult for small businesses to get started. I automated the whole process for multiple websites that I run, and I have now productized this. I call it Butter. It's Butter SEO.

You can buy a one-time package with backlinks, suggested questions for more backlinks, content, and crucially, keywords that actually work for you and for your company and for your website. It's Butter SEO. Alternatively, tools that I highly recommend if you have the budget are Ahrefs, which I use for almost everything, and Surfer for SEO. They are expensive. They are worth the money. But really make sure that you also understand how to use them and that you have the time to use them.

They're amazing. Next slide, please. Keywords matter. Backlinks matter. Tools. Great. So quick recap. SEO is a really great way of getting customers for free, forever. You can find great keywords if you know where to look. Look on Butter, look on Ahrefs. Optimize your content for those keywords to get traffic from Google. Get more backlinks, and use tools. That's all it is. SEO can be easy. Backlinks, tools, keywords. That's it. Next slide, please. That's it. Connect with me on LinkedIn, please.

Audience questions

14:42

Are there questions? Question. Yes, I kind of had a look at Ahrefs, and it's an amazing program. It's very expensive at the moment. Do you have any, if you have a very low budget or no budget, on how to find keywords?

Like for example, if you put a search term in Google, you get a drop-down list, it gives you some indication, but it doesn't give you volume, it doesn't give you any of those other statistics which really help you identify the best keyword. Do you have any recommendations? This is honestly why I built Butter SEO, because I couldn't find any alternatives.

And I also talked to a lot of founder friends who are always asking me about SEO recommendations, and I would just give them the keywords. It doesn't take that much time, but I pay for Ahrefs, I have API access to Ahrefs. All you need is a person who pays for Ahrefs to have time to give you keywords.

But it does take time, and that's why I built Butter, because then I can just give you keywords at scale in a way that makes sense. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a great solution if all you need is 20 to 50 keywords to get you started creating content. I still think Ahrefs is the number one best tool. I love it to death, but it is really expensive. I hope that answers your question. About Semrush: I don't use Semrush.

I have heard from other people that it's also a great tool. It's similarly priced, so I think that's the biggest challenge with it. I'm sure they have different purposes, different specifics, but they're very similar. Yeah. Tanya, great hearing this. I put my website up in May, put up about 25 articles, I use Surfer, etc. Okay. But now I'm just so swamped with other things running the business, and I know I need backlinks, but it's time consuming. Yeah.

How can I find somebody to do this time consuming process for me? Is there a good service out there? Does Butter do it? It's also Butter. Butter only focuses on backlinks and keywords, and it gives you like a get started guide to getting Google Analytics set up and stuff like that. But really it just does keywords and backlinks.

It's a one-time fee of $200 to get you top tier backlinks, and what it will do is it will look at your website, it will look at your niche, and depending on the niche that you are in, it will submit you to a bunch of directories. Sorry, this is a bit more technical, but you asked for it. So it will submit you to a bunch of directories that help you rank higher.

You can do this manually as well, but it does take a lot of time. And so we use a combination of AI and manual labor to outsource that and just help you get started with it, because when you do it at scale, it's quite easy for me to get directories for every category, but it's very hard for one person to keep finding them all the time. How many backlinks do you think? It really depends. It really, really depends.

It depends on how high the domain rating is of the websites that you have backlinks from. It depends on your keyword difficulty, the kind of keywords that you're trying to target. So let's say all your keyword difficulty is zero. Your domain rating doesn't matter, it's fine, you're going to be fine.

But if you have keyword difficulties like 100, which is terrible, you're going to need to get different keywords first of all, but also you're going to need to get a domain rating of like 80, 90. You need to get into BBC, Forbes, top tier media. Yeah. So it's a wide range, it really is. I would say generally focus on establishing the basic foundation, which is like five to 10 backlinks in some directories, maybe on your partners' websites and stuff like that.

Gets you going, gets you to a domain rating of like 15, 20. You're fine. Yeah, keep it easy. Yes? Could you give an example of a backlink? I don't even know what that is. Yeah, cool. Sorry, that's a great question, and I should have been more clear. A backlink is just a link from one website to another website. So let's say that you own the website Barcelona.com. I mean, I don't know, that'd be amazing.

But if you own Barcelona.com and you write a blog post on Barcelona.com, and the blog post says I love Metropolitan Barcelona, and you actually link to it, it turns blue, it's underlined, it's a hyperlink. That means that Barcelona Metropolitan gets a vote of confidence, gets a backlink from Barcelona.com, and that helps them get a little more trust in the eyes of Google.

Google essentially operates thousands of bots, millions of bots, and updates all the time how many hyperlinks are going to one website. Yeah. So it's just a hyperlink. Yes. Is there any specific area that performs better with backlinks? Like for example blogs, should it be only on blogs, or should it be on the home page? That's a great, great question. It gets pretty complex.

I would say the main thing you need to know is that any blog anywhere on the website is fine. Social media works a little bit. LinkedIn backlinks don't work as well. They operate a system called do-follow and no-follow. If you have a link from LinkedIn to anywhere else, they make it so that they block the vote of confidence, because LinkedIn has so many links to other websites that it doesn't make sense for them to give that vote of confidence to everybody.

Reddit works a little bit. It doesn't work fully. The best thing is websites. Yeah. But yeah, it's a great question. I will say though, even though the social media websites don't work as well, it still helps a little bit. So put it in your bio, put it in other places, just don't focus on putting it in every post or something, it's weird. If you have more questions, maybe after. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry guys.